Дэвид Балдаччи - Absolute Power

“Hello?” The voice was full of sleep.

“Kate?”

Jack counted the seconds until her mind cleared and identified the voice.

“Jesus Christ, Jack, do you know what time it is?”

“Can I come over?”

“No, you cannot come over. I thought we had settled all of this.”

He paused, steeled himself. “It’s not about that.” He paused again. “It’s about your father.”

The extended silence was difficult to interpret.

“What about him?” The tone was not as cold as he would have thought.

“He’s in trouble.”

Now the familiar tone returned. “So? Why the hell does that still surprise you?”

“I mean he’s in serious trouble. He just proceeded to scare the living shit out of me without really telling me anything.”

“Jack, it’s late and whatever my father is involved in—”

“Kate, he was scared, I mean really scared. So scared he threw up.”

Again there was a long pause. Jack tracked her mental processes as she thought about the man they both knew so well. Luther Whitney scared? That didn’t make sense. His line of work necessarily demanded someone with steel nerves. Not a violent person, his entire adult life had been spent right on the edge of danger.

She was terse. “Where are you?”

“Right across the street.”

Jack looked up as he saw a slender figure move to a window of the building and look out. He waved.

The door opened to Jack’s knock and he saw her retreating into the kitchen where he heard a pot clattering, water being poured and the gas on the stove being lit. He looked around the room, and then stood just inside the front door feeling a little foolish.

A minute later she walked back in. She had on a thick bathrobe that ended at her ankles. She was barefoot. Jack found himself staring at her feet. She followed his gaze and then looked at him. He jolted back.

“How’s the ankle? Looks fine.” He smiled.

She frowned and said tersely, “It’s late, Jack. What about him?”

He moved into the tiny living room and sat down. She sat across from him.

“He called me up a couple hours ago. We grabbed some food at that little dive next to Eastern Market and then started walking. He told me he needed a favor. That he was in trouble. Serious trouble with some people who could do some permanent damage to him. Real permanent.”

The tea kettle started whistling. She jumped up. He watched her go, the sight of her perfectly shaped derriere outlined against the bathrobe bringing back a flood of memories he wished would just leave him the hell alone. She came back with two cups of tea.

“What was the favor?” She sipped her tea. Jack left his where it was.

“He said he needed a lawyer. He might need a lawyer. Although things might turn out so he wouldn’t. He wanted me to be that lawyer.”

She put her tea down. “Is that it?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Maybe for an honest, respectable person, but not for him.”

“My God, Kate, the man was scared. I’ve never seen him scared before, have you?”

“I’ve seen all I need to see of him. He chose his lifestyle and now apparently it’s catching up to him.”

“He’s your father for chrissakes.”

“Jack, I don’t want to have this conversation.” She started to get up.

“What if something happens to him? Then what?”

She looked at him coldly. “Then it happens. That’s not my problem.”

Jack got up and started to leave. Then he turned back, his face red with anger. “I’ll tell you how the funeral service goes. On second thought, what the hell would you care? I’ll just make sure you get a copy of the death certificate for your scrapbook.”

He didn’t know she could move that quickly, but he would feel the slap for about a week, like someone had poured acid across his cheek, a truer description than he realized at the moment.

“How dare you?” Her eyes blazed at him as he slowly rubbed his face.

Then the tears erupted from her with so much force that they spilled onto the front of the robe.

He said quietly, as calmly as he could, “Don’t shoot the messenger, Kate. I told Luther and I’m telling you, life is way too short for this crap. I lost both my parents a long time ago. Okay, you have reasons for not liking the guy, fine. That’s up to you. But the old man loves you and cares about you and regardless of how you think he’s screwed up your life you have to respect that love. That’s my advice to you, take it or leave it.”

He moved toward the door but she again got there before him.

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“Fine, I don’t know anything about it. Go back to bed, I’m sure you’ll fall right asleep, nothing important on your mind.”

She grabbed his coat with such force that she jerked him around, even though he outweighed her by eighty pounds.

“I was two years old when he went to prison for the last time. I was nine when he got out. Do you understand the in credible shame of a little girl whose dad is in prison? Whose dad steals other’s people’s property for a living? When you had show-and-tell at school and the one kid’s dad is a doctor and another’s is a truck driver and it comes to your turn and the teacher looks down and tells the class that Katie’s dad had to go away because he did something bad and then she’d skip to the next kid?

“He was never there for us. Never! Mom worried sick about him all the time. But she always kept the faith, right up until the end. She made it easy for him.”

“She finally divorced him, Kate,” Jack gently reminded her.

“Only because that was the only choice she had left. And right when she was just getting her life turned around, she finds a lump in her breast and in six months she’s gone.”

Kate leaned back against the wall. She looked so tired, it was painful to witness. “And you know what the really crazy thing is? She never once stopped loving him. After all the incredible shit he put her through.” Kate shook her head, having a hard time believing the words she had just spoken. She looked up at Jack, her chin trembling slightly.

“But that’s okay, I have enough hate for both of us.” She stared at him, a mixture of pride and righteousness on her features.

Jack didn’t know if it was the complete exhaustion he was feeling or the fact that for so many years what he was about to say had been pent up inside him. Years of watching this charade. And brushing it aside in favor of the beauty and vivaciousness of the woman across from him. His vision of perfection.

“Is that your idea of justice, Kate? Enough hate balanced against enough love, and everything equals out?”

She stepped back. “What are you talking about?”

He moved forward as she continued to retreat into the small room. “I’ve listened to this goddamned martyrdom of yours until I’m sick of it. You think you’re some perfect defender of the hurt and victimized. Nothing comes above that. Not you, not me, not your father. The only reason you’re out there prosecuting every sonofabitch that comes into your sights is because your father hurt you. Every time you convict somebody that’s another nail in your old man’s heart.”

Her hand flew to his face. He caught it, gripped it. “Your whole adult life has been spent getting back at him. For all the wrongs. For all the hurt. For never being there for you.” He squeezed her hand until he heard her gasp. “Did you ever once stop to think that maybe you were never there for him?”

He let go of her hand as she stood there, staring at him, a look on her face he had never seen before.

“Do you understand that Luther loves you so much that he’s never tried to contact you, never tried to be a part of your life, because he knows that’s how you want it? His only child living a few miles away from him and he’s completely cut out of her life. Did you ever think about how he feels? Did your hate ever let you do that?”