John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

‘And you came down here last night?’

He nodded. ‘You weren’t home from your party. I got stir crazy. What did they want?’

She threw a glance behind her as if worried that someone would hear. Then back to him. ‘They wanted to know where you were. I told them. Didn’t they come by here?’

He pointed with his cigar in the direction of the water. ‘I was out.’

‘In this fog?’

He shrugged. ‘Living dangerously. What difference does it make? So what did you do all day?’

‘I was home until noon, waiting for you to get back. Then I had lunch with my mother and brother. Then there was the Library do – the Sponsors’ Dinner?’

Jim Pierce slapped at his forehead in mock consternation. ‘That was tonight? And I missed it?’ He tossed her a dismissive look. ‘See,’ he said, ‘you had a fine time without me.’

‘Everyone wondered where you were. They said they missed you.’

‘I’m sure they did. And I them.’

She had her arms crossed, and now leaned back against the railing. ‘I don’t know why you’re so cruel, Jim. I don’t know when that started.’

He took a beat, carefully lifted his metal cup, and took a slow sip. ‘Oh, I think you can figure it out. You get rejected enough, it makes you bitter. Some people, they get bitter, they take it out by being cruel.’

‘I never rejected you.’

A stab of staccato laughter. No, he thought, you just made it impossible to ask anymore. But he said, ‘That’s right. It was me.’

A long, dead silence.

One of the channel buoys at the mouth of the marina chimed deeply, followed almost immediately by the forlorn moan of a foghorn. Jim Pierce tossed his cigar butt into the bay and reached over to flick off the television.

His wife looked as though she were waiting for him to say something, so he obliged her. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Nothing matters.’

‘You can’t do this!’ Valens was actually near to screaming. He had pulled Damon Kerry out on to the roof of whatever goddam hotel they were in after his talk to whatever goddam group it was. ‘You can’t do this with two days to go! You’re alienating people, don’t you understand? And you can’t do that and win.’

‘I’m being myself,’ Kerry said. ‘I’ve never lost an election and I’ve been myself in each one.’

‘Yeah, but Damon, you’ve never run for governor before! This is not a city supervisor job. This is high office, and that’s why I’m on board, remember? I do this. I keep candidates from being themselves, especially with forty-eight hours to go. I’ll tell you what – you want to be yourself, be yourself on Wednesday.’ He paced off a few steps and swore succinctly.

Kerry came up behind him. ‘I am not alienating my electorate. I’m trying to reach people, to tell the truth. People respond to that, to me.’

‘No,’ Valens said. He turned around, despising the law of politics that the tall guy always wins. Kerry had him by half a foot, and this close, Valens had to look up at him. But he was going to say his piece – uphill, downhill, sideways – and Kerry was going to have to hear. ‘No no no. Listen to me carefully. You are not trying to reach people or tell the truth or be yourself or any of that. You are trying to get yourself elected. That’s all you’re trying to do right now. And we’re running behind all day, missing meetings, you’re deviating from the script…’

‘There’s no script. There’s-’

‘No, Damon. The script is all that’s left at this point. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Smile, smile, smile. And keep moving, keep moving, don’t miss an opportunity to repeat repeat repeat.’

‘Except we missed a few this morning, didn’t we, Al? And why was that? Because you were late picking me up.’

‘ You overslept, Damon.’

‘I depend on you, Al. I was exhausted and I’m getting sick. And what about you? The job of the campaign manager is get the candidate where he needs to be. That’s what he does. He doesn’t keep the candidate from being himself.’ He put a couple of fingers up to his forehead. ‘I really am getting sick,’ he said. ‘I’ve been sick for weeks.’

Valens was at the edge of the roof. Below him, he was aware of the gauzy glow of the city’s lights through the fog. He’d been in similar situations in nearly every election with which he’d been involved – the schoolgirl squabbling during the last leg of a campaign.

Damon Kerry undoubtedly was feeling sick, and Valens didn’t really blame him. The pace was grueling, the pressures unrelenting. Valens might be frustrated and worried in his own right, but for the sake of the election, it was time to calm the waters. ‘Damon,’ he said gently, ‘we’ve got one more day and tomorrow starts early. Why don’t we get you back home, to get a good night’s rest if you can? We’re close now. We can still pull this out.’

‘It’s not just the election.’ Kerry was shaking his head. ‘You don’t know, Al.’

‘Yes I do, Damon, I really do. And what I know is that it is just the election.’

But Kerry wasn’t on that page. ‘All I know is that if I hadn’t started down this path, Bree would still be alive. If she hadn’t…’ He trailed off.

But they had covered this ground a hundred times, most often late at night when Kerry’s defenses were down. Valens laid an avuncular hand up on his candidate’s shoulder. ‘She did, though.’ He patted the shoulder gently to demonstrate his commiseration. ‘Let’s get you home, get some rest,’ he said. ‘It’ll look better in the morning.’

Thorne was at the kitchen table in his apartment halfway up Nob Hill, putting the finishing touches on a memorandum he’d print up tomorrow regarding the oil companies’ ten point eight million dollars in contributions to the country’s political campaigns this year. In the memo, he noted that Damon Kerry had not accepted one dime from this source. Thorne thought that if he got the news release distributed early enough in the day, it would certainly get into some of Tuesday’s papers, perhaps before many people had gone to the polls, and might even make a few late-breaking news shows looking for a filler by tomorrow night.

Every little bit helped, he believed, especially in light of the continuing MTBE poisoning story which was gratifyingly ubiquitous. Kerry’s opposition to big oil was going to play very well, possibly right up through election day.

He proofread his final copy, then placed the papers in his briefcase, opened a cold beer, and poured it into a chilled Pilsner glass. Then he went into his living room and turned on the television.

The late evening news didn’t let him down. It led off with the continuing followup on the Pulgas Water Temple story. The Water District had taken samples in the city’s drinking water and found levels of MTBE that were lower than the EPA standards, and so technically ‘safe.’ But the levels were still deemed ‘detectable,’ and residents were advised to ‘use caution.’

Thorne smiled at the language, and at the hysterical reaction of the public that the media play nearly guaranteed. MTBE was bad stuff, all right – an aspirin’s worth in an Olympic-sized swimming pool was toxic – but ten or fifteen gallons in a reservoir the size of Crystal Springs wasn’t going to make anybody sick, not immediately anyway. Nevertheless, over thirty people had sought medical attention in emergency rooms all over the city after drinking the water yesterday and this morning.

On-the-street interviews indicated that nearly everyone tasted ‘something funny’ in the water, a turpentine taste.

Thorne had made a point of drinking a few glasses in the course of the day and had tasted nothing.