John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

“I don’t know that I like this,” Catherine said. “I don’t know that I like acting in the dark.”

“Well, we’re all in uncharted territory here. But I need to be one hundred percent sure about our roles.”

“We will do what you ask. Although I don’t see-”

“That’s the point. You don’t see.”

Sally paused in the doorway. She looked over at Catherine, then to her daughter. “I wonder if you understand how much people love you,” she said cautiously. “And what people might be willing to do for you.”

Ashley didn’t reply, other than to nod her head.

“Of course,” Catherine injected, “the same might be said for Michael O’Connell, which is why we’re all here.”

Scott sat in the Porsche and dialed O’Connell’s father on the cell phone that Sally had provided for him. The line rang three times before the man picked it up.

“Mr. O’Connell?” Scott said with a businesslike tone.

“Who’s this?” The words were slightly slurred. A two-beer, maybe three, tone.

“This would be Mr. Smith, Mr. O’Connell.”

“Who?” A momentary confusion.

“Mr. Jones, if you prefer.”

O’Connell’s father laughed. “Oh, yeah, hey, sure. Hey, that e-mail you gave me didn’t work. I tried it and it came back undeliverable.”

“A slight change in procedures precipitated by necessity, I assure you. I apologize.”

Scott assumed that the only real reason that O’Connell’s father had a computer in the first place was to easily access pornographic websites.

“Let me give you a cell phone number.” He quickly read off the number.

“Okay, got it. But I ain’t heard shit from my boy, and I’m not expecting to.”

“Mr. O’Connell, I have every indication that things might change. I believe that you might hear from him. And, if so, please call that number immediately, as we discussed previously. My client’s interest in speaking with your son has, shall I say, increased in recent days. His need has, shall we say, grown more urgent. Therefore, as you can easily see, his sense of obligation to you, if you were to make that call, would be substantially more than I initially guessed. Do you understand exactly what I’m saying?”

O’Connell hesitated, then said, “Yeah. I get lucky, the kid shows up, and it’s gonna turn out even better for me. But like I say, I ain’t heard from him and I ain’t likely to.”

“Well, we can always hope. For everyone’s sakes,” Scott said as he disconnected the line. He leaned his head back and reached for the electric window switch. He felt as if he were choking. He was almost overcome with nausea, but when he tried to vomit, he could only cough dryly.

He breathed in rapidly and looked down at the yellow sheet of paper that Sally had given him, with its list of tasks. There was something deeply terrible about her ability to organize, and to think with mathematical precision about, something as difficult as they were about to do. For a moment, he could feel his temperature rising again, and a vile, bilious taste in his mouth.

All his life, Scott believed, he had performed on the periphery of importance. He had gone to war because he knew it was the defining moment of his generation, but then he had stepped back and kept himself safe. His education, his teaching, were all about helping students, but never himself. His marriage had been a humiliating disaster with the sole exception of Ashley. And now, here he was in middle age churning his way through the days of his life, and this threat was the first moment when he was being asked to do something truly unique, something outside all the careful boundaries and limitations he had placed on his life. It was one thing to act like a boisterous father and say, “I’d kill that guy,” when there was really little chance of that happening. Now that their plan to cause a death was in place and starting to grind its gears inexorably forward, he wavered. He wondered whether he could do more than merely lie.

Lying, he thought. That I’m good at. Plenty of experience.

Again he looked at the list. Words were not going to be enough, he knew.

Another wave of nausea threatened his stomach, but he fought it off, put the car in gear, and headed first for the hardware store. He knew, later, perhaps at midnight, he had to make a trip to the airport. He did not expect to sleep much in the hours to come.

It was midmorning, and Catherine and Ashley were the only people remaining in the house. Sally had departed, dressed as she would for her office, other clothing stuffed into her briefcase. Hope, as well, had left the house as if nothing were out of the ordinary, her backpack thrown jauntily over her shoulder. Neither of the two women had said anything to Ashley and Catherine about what the day held.

And both Catherine and Ashley had seen a furtiveness in their eyes.

If Sally and Hope had slept much the night before, it was lost in their tense gestures and short-tempered words. Still, they had both moved with a singleness of purpose that had almost set Ashley back. She had never seen either of the two women behaving with such steel-eyed and iron movement.

Catherine came in, breathing hard. “Something is clearly afoot, dear.” She held her yellow legal paper with instructions in her hand.

“That’s putting it mildly,” Ashley said. “God damn it. I can’t stand being outside, trying to look in.”

“We need to follow the plan. Whatever it is.”

“When has any plan that my parents have come up with ever really worked out?” Ashley said, although she realized she sounded a little like a petulant teenager.

“I don’t know about that. But Hope generally does exactly what she says she’s going to do. She’s as solid as a rock.”

Ashley nodded. “Thick as a brick. After the divorce, my dad used to play that for me on his tape deck and we would dance around the living room. Common ground was hard to find, so he would start blasting all his sixties rock and roll. Jethro Tull. The Stones. The Dead. The Who. Hendrix. Joplin. He taught me the Frug and the Watusi and the Freddy.” Ashley suddenly looked out the window, unaware that her father had recalled the same memory days earlier. “I wonder if he and I will ever dance again. I always thought we would, you know, just the one time, when I got married, when everyone was watching. He would just swoop in and we’d do a turn or two and everyone would clap. Long white dress for me. Tuxedo for him. When I was little, the only thing I wanted was to fall in love. Not a sad, angry mess, like my mother and father. Something more like Hope and my mother, except there would be a really, really good-looking, smart guy involved. And you know, when I would say this to Hope, she was always the first to tell me how great it would be. We would laugh and imagine wedding dresses and flowers and all the little-girl things.” Ashley stepped back. “And now, the first man to say he loves me and truly mean it is a nightmare.”

“Life is strange,” Catherine said. “We have to trust them that they know what they’re doing.”

“You think they do?”

Catherine saw that in Ashley’s right hand she held the revolver.

“If I get the damn chance…” Ashley said.

Then she pointed at the list. “All right. Act one. Scene one. Enter Ashley and Catherine, stage right. What’s our opening line?”

Catherine looked down at her list. “First thing is the trickiest. We have to make sure that O’Connell isn’t here. I guess we’re taking that walk outside.”

“Then what?” Ashley asked.

Catherine looked down at the paper. “Then it’s your big moment. It’s the bit your mother underlined three times. Are you ready?”

Ashley didn’t answer. She was unsure.