Эд Горман - Blood Moon

3. Ten years ago, a woman who had pretended to be his wife broke into his home and stole several credit cards and ran up bills of more than $50,000 before the cards could be canceled.

4. He had plans to possibly enter the Republican primary next spring and was afraid that “Nora Conners” had been hired to discredit him in some way. Politics had become a very rough game. Thus far he had heard whispers that (a) his main corporation was facing bankruptcy; (b) that he frequented houses where girls as young as twelve could be had; and (c) that he had once bought his way out of a drunken hit-and-run accident.

5. He wanted to retain me to find out who “Nora Conners” was and why she had claimed to be his daughter. And what had led to her murder.

The place was small and made even smaller by the lunchtime crowd that had at least a dozen people standing and waiting for booths. It was one of those blissful oases of ignorance that had not yet heard that smoking causes lung cancer. Everybody, it seemed, had a cigarette going, even as he or she chewed his or her food. There were a couple three- and four-year-olds in the booth across from us. I was waiting for them to light up, too.

He shook his very white head. “No, not as fast. And not as cheaply, either. The press will be able to learn whatever the police learn but if you could find out who she really was and what she was up to — well, I could practice a little political damage control before all this hits the press.”

“Won’t you look like a victim to people? Why would they blame you for a woman who pretended she was your daughter?”

He smiled. He was a trim man, neatly shaved, manicured, crisply dressed, all of which left just the faintest hint of priggishness. Maybe it was his thin mouth and its constant implication of displeasure.

Before he answered, our waitress came around again, filling our coffee, taking away the plates from the chips and tuna sandwich I’d had, and the Egg Beaters and toast he’d had.

“People don’t remember things clearly,” he said. “By the time this story filters through the public consciousness, a lot of people will remember that I’d had an affair with this Nora, and maybe even that I’d been a suspect in her death.” He paused and raised his head a little. His neck was the only thing on him that looked his real age. “This morning I took the liberty of depositing ten thousand dollars in your bank account.”

This was my week for strange people wanting to give me a great deal of money. First Nora, now him.

“I’m not sure I buy your story.”

“Oh?” he said, his blue eyes hard.

“No, I think you’re interested in Nora and Vic for some other reason.”

“What other reason?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

He laughed. “Maybe you should investigate me first and then if you’re satisfied with what you find, start on Nora and Vic.”

“You say you had a son?”

“Yes. He died a long time ago, just as I told you.”

“What about your wife?”

“She’s dead, too. Nearly ten years ago.”

“Do you have a lady friend now?”

“No one special. I’m not sure I see the relevance of that.”

“Maybe Nora was angling for some kind of blackmail setup. Sometimes that works best with somebody close to the person being blackmailed. A girlfriend who decides to cash in on her rich boyfriend tells an accomplice the boyfriend’s darkest secret. And the blackmailer takes it from there, after agreeing to split fifty-fifty with the girlfriend.”

“They sound like nice people, your girlfriend and blackmailer.”

“So nobody’s blackmailing you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“And you don’t have anything they can blackmail you for?”

He smiled. “Do you know the Balzac quote that behind every great fortune is a scandal?”

I nodded.

“Well, I didn’t make our fortune, my father did. The trucking business made him a millionaire many, many times over. All I did was inherit the fortune. My father had to cheat and swindle a lot of people to make his money. All I had to do was be the dutiful son — get at least a B average at Yale and not do anything publicly excessive that would embarrass him — and I became a very wealthy man on the day he died, twelve years ago. If there are any family secrets they belong to my father, and he took them with him to his grave.”

“And you want to run for office?”

“As I said, I’m considering it. I think I’m what the state and the country need.”

“What’s that?”

“A conservative without an ideology. It’s frustrating being a conservative these days — you always have to sit next to some lunatic who wants creationism taught in public schools or something like that.”

“Think you have a chance?”

“I have the money, anyway. That’s a big part of the battle. I won’t have to depend on PACs.”

I looked at his ridiculously young face and his brilliant white hair and the quirky but stone-hard blue eyes. I didn’t trust him, didn’t believe anything he was telling me, but I didn’t know why. He just seemed dishonest.

“You’re going back to Des Moines?”

“Not right away. Thought I might stay here a few days and see what you find out.”

“Assuming I take the job.”

“Assuming you take the job. Of course.”

“I guess I’ll do it.”

“I’m very pleased.”

“But when I do find out anything concrete, I turn it over to the local police chief.”

“After you tell me. That’s all I ask. Tell me first. I’ll contact my press aide, and she can start to prepare our response.”

I stood up, dropped a dollar on the table for a tip, picked up the ticket.

He took it from my hand, then picked up the dollar and handed it back to me. “I invited you, Mr. Hokanson. I’m the one who should pay.”

Out on the street, in the fresh air and sunshine, he said, “A friend of mine has a summer cottage here. You can reach me there.” He gave me the address. “When your father was the biggest trucker in the state, you have friends everywhere.”

He put forth his firm but civil hand, and we shook again.

I went east, he went west.

“You screwed your own daughter. You hear that, guys, he screwed his own daughter?”

“That’s enough. Spence,” the counselor says. “This isn’t funny.”

“He put the pork to his own daughter.”

This is group therapy. Meets twice a week in a big, echoing room near the prison library. Pistol-hot in summer, blue-balls cold in winter.

Standard number is the counselor and six cons, one of whom is this rather prim fellow named Dodsworth.

Past couple weeks the cons have been kind of ganging up on Dodsworth. Few sessions back he told — they were playing this nasty game called True Life, where you tell the group the worst thing you ever did — he told the group that one night when he was really bombed his fourteen-year-old daughter gave him this big sloppy kiss and he got this killer erection and then walked around for the next six weeks impotent because he was so ashamed of what he’d felt for his daughter.

You could tell when he raised his eyes and started looking around at everybody that he’d messed up real bad.

Should never have admitted something like that.

Because everybody knows it’s the truth.

See, the way to play the game is, you make stuff up. Like, Well, I guess the worst thing I ever did was after I robbed this guy, you know, I found this dynamite out in the back and I blew up his entire house. Boards ’n bricks ’n stuff flyin’ everywhere. It was great, man.

And everybody laughs.