Interface (48 page)

Mel was pained. "Of course I knew it, girl! But it's like dragging
a man out of a burning car. You have to act, you can't think about
the possibility that he'll later sue you for spraining his shoulder. I
did what I had to do. I did it well." Mel turned and looked at her,
a dry grin coming to his lips. "I was awesome, frankly."

"Well, what are you getting at?"

"You know who Markene Caldicott is?"

"Of course I do!" She was surprised that Mel would even ask this
question.

"Oh, that's right. You're probably the type who listens to RNA all the time."

Mary Catherine grinned and shook her head. Most people considered Radio North America to be the height of journalistic
sophistication, but Mel still had it lumped together with MTV and
Arena Football. He got his radio news via shortwave, from the
BBC.

"What about Markene Caldicott?" she said.

"Well, apparently she's some hotshot reporter," Mel said
skeptically.

"You could say that."

"She's after my ass. And I don't mean that in the sexual sense,"
Mel said. "She's called every single person I've ever worked with. I can read this woman's mind like a fucking cereal box."

"What's she doing?"

"She'd really like to shoot down your father," Mel said, "but she can't, because Willy is without flaw, and was incapacitated for the last couple of months besides. So instead, she is going to do a big
expose where she makes me out to be this sort of Richelieu with a
yarmulke. The shadowy power who pulled the strings while
Cozzano drooled down his chin. You know the kind of thing."

"Your basic over inflated election-year scandal."

"Yeah. She probably figures that Willy is going to get into the
race and she wants to be the first to take shots at him. So I'm going
to head her off at the pass."

"How are you going to do that?"

"I'm going to drive back up to Daley," Mel said. He and Mary
Catherine had both fallen into the habit of using Cozzano's
poststroke jargon. "And have dinner with Mark McCabe. A
political reporter from the
Trib.
And I'm going to spill my guts.
Going to lay the whole thing out."

Mary Catherine was shocked. "You're going to tell him
everything?"

Mel looked at her with an expression that was somewhere
between fatherly disappointment and pity. "Are you nuts? Of
course I'm not going to tell him everything. I'm just going to make
it look like I'm telling him everything."

"Oh."

"So McCabe will get a big front-page story. We will release the
information in the form most favourable to us. Markene Caldicott
will have been scooped, and her story, if she even bothers to air the
damn thing, will have virtually no impact. And the Cozzano family
and administration will be totally exonerated, because I, the runty
Jew lawyer, will take all the heat."

"That's very good of you," Mary Catherine said.

Mel laughed and slapped the steering wheel. "Ha! Good of me.
I like that. You downstaters just kill me. 'Very good of you,'" he mimicked her, not unkindly, and laughed again. Mary Catherine
could feel her face radiating warmth. "Look, kid, this is not about
good. This is not a good and evil thing, this is about being smart
and taking our losses in the way that is least disadvantageous to us.
That's what I am trying to set up here."

"Okay."

"I'm going to great lengths to be clever and set this whole thing
up the way that is best for us," Mel continued, now starting to
sound almost a little peeved, "and it just kills me when you try to
characterize it as some kind of church-social altruism. It's like
you're failing to see and appreciate the full artistry that is involved
here."

"Sorry. I think it's very devious," she said, now getting a little
peeved herself.

"Thank you. That's a compliment I can handle. Now we are on the same wavelength."

"Good."

"We're both listening to the same station," Mel said, extending
the metaphor. "Both listening to the BBC instead of that RNA
crap." He spoke the final word with a resounding, sardonic whip
lash that made them both laugh, albeit nervously. "So let's stay
away from this weepy sentimental shit and do what is best for our families over the next several generations," Mel said.

"Okay."

"What is best, for right now, is that I, Mel Meyer, get out of
Dodge."

"What do you mean?"

Mel sighed, a little defeated, as if he'd been hoping that Mary
Catherine would simply get it. "Jesus, girl, I'm going public
tonight. Telling the whole world that I did something unethical.
I'm going to take the heat for the decisions that I made in January
and February. Which were good decisions - but sooner or later, the
karma comes back and hits you. Now, once I've made myself out
to be the evil, scheming homunculus that I am, how can I possibly continue to be a close adviser and confidante of the Cozzano clan?
The whole point is that everyone throws shit at me, it all sticks, and
then I run away and take all the shit with me. If I stick around you
guys, some of it's bound to rub off."

As Mel explained all of this, the whole situation became clear to
Mary Catherine, and the cloud of emotion that had obscured the
beginning of this conversation lifted away. She felt calm and relaxed.

"How far away are you going to run?"

"Oh, pretty far, at least for a while," Mel said. "I'm formally
severing my relationship with your father, as his attorney, and
sending his files over to Ty Addison at Norton Addison Goldberg
Green. Ty'll take good care of you guys. I will stay in touch by
phone, but this is the last time I'll show my face in Tuscola for a
while. It's okay for us to see each other when you come up to Chicago, as long as it's something casual, like lunch. Anything
more than that, and someone in the media will notice it, and make
it out to look like I'm still lurking in the shadows, pulling strings."

"What about the long term you were talking about?"

"Long term, nothing has changed. This is a blip on the screen of
history."

During the conversation he had been steering the Mercedes
randomly around the gridwork of roads that covered the area,
occasionally zigzagging his way back toward the Cozzano
farmhouse. Myron Morris's Suburban passed them going the other
way and they waved at each other. Finally Mel stopped next to
Mary Catherine's car, parked along the shoulder, and she realized
that he meant for her to get out.

"Do I get a hug?" she asked. "Or is that too sinister for Markene
Caldicott?"

Mel just sat there passively, as though suddenly stunned by what
he was doing.

Mary Catherine unfasted her seat belt, leaned over the gap
between the seats, and encircled Mel's neck in her arms, nearly
lying down sideways across the front of the car. Mel wrapped his
arms around her body and held her tight for at least a minute. Then
he let go, all of a sudden.

"Okay, I want to be alone now," he said.

Mary Catherine pecked him once on the cheek and climbed
rapidly out of the car without looking back. She slammed the door
behind her. Mel's car was moving forward before the door was
even shut. The tires broke loose from the pavement, spun, and
squealed, kicking back twin spurts of blue smoke, and the Mercedes shot down the road past the old farmhouse, just like in the old days.
In the windows of the farmhouse, the faces of young Cozzanos
appeared, drawn by the noise, then drifted away as they saw that it
was just Mel Meyer, the old lawyer from Chicago who liked to
drive fast.

William A. Cozzano was out for his morning constitutional: out his
back door, through the gate and into the alley, half a block down,
through a break in the hedge, and into the Thorsen's driveway.
Down the edge of their side yard, waving to ninety-year-old Mrs.
Thorsen, who was invariably standing at her kitchen window
washing dishes, then into the street, another half block up, through
a gap in the chain-link fence around Tuscola City park, and from
there, wherever he wanted to go. It was a route he had been
following since he had learned to walk the first time, and it was one
of the first thing he had done when he learned to walk the second
time.

Nowadays, of course, he was usually accompanied by half a
dozen support personnel when he did it. Mrs. Thorsen didn't seem
to mind all those people traipsing through her yard. She lived alone
now. It was a mystery how she could have so many dishes to wash,
but she was always there washing them.

The trip to the park was a tricky, twisting affair that Cozzano's entourage had to accomplish in single file. Once they reached the broad open spaces of the park proper, they were able to spread out
and walk in a group. Usually the entourage consisted of a couple of
nurses, Myron Morris's home-movie crew, and someone from the
Radhakrishnan Institute, connected back to a bedroom in the
Cozzano house by a radio headset. On this particular day, Zeldo came along for the walk.

"You're walking. You're talking. Congratulations," he said.

"Thanks. It's nice," Cozzano said.

"If you keep improving the way you have been, then by
sometime in mid June you should be essentially back to normal."

"Excellent."

"I'd like to know if you would have any interest in developing
some capabilities that are
better
than normal."

This was a bizarre suggestion and Zeldo knew it; he was visibly
nervous as he spoke the words. He watched Cozzano's face
carefully for a reaction.

For along time, Cozzano didn't react at all. He kept walking as
if he hadn't heard. But he was no longer looking around. He was
staring down at the grass in front of his feet, trying to scorch a hole
in the ground with his eyes.

After a minute, or so, he seemed to reach a conclusion. He
looked up again. But he still didn't speak for another minute or so.
He was apparently formulating a response. Finally he looked at
Zeldo and said, nonchalantly, "I have always been a strong believer
in self-improvement."

"I'm seeing my aunt Mary taking an apple pie out of the oven,"
Cozzano said. "It is Thanksgiving Day of 1954 at 2:15
p.m.
A
football game is going on the television in the next room. My father
and some uncles and cousins are watching it. They are all smoking
pipes and the smoke stings my nose. The Lions have the ball on
their own thirty-five, second down and four yards to go. But I'm
concentrating on the pie."

"Okay, that's good," Zeldo said, typing all of this furiously into
the computer. "Now, what happens when I stimulate this link?" He swiveled around to another keyboard and typed a command into another computer.

Cozzano's eyes narrowed. He was staring into the distance,
unfocused.

"Just a very fleeting image of Christina at the age of about thirty-
five," Cozzano said. "She's in the living room, wearing a yellow
dress. I can't remember much more than that. Now it's fading."

"Okay, how about this one?" Zeldo said, typing in another
command.

Cozzano drew a sharp breath into his nostrils and began to smack
his lips and swallow. "A very intense odor. Some kind of chemical
odor that I was exposed to at the plant. Possibly a pesticide."

"But you're not getting any visuals?"

"None whatsoever."

"Okay, how about this one?"

"Jesus!" Cozzano shouted. Genuine fright and astonishment had come over his face. He half-slid, half-rolled out of his chair and
dropped to the floor of the bedroom, landing on his belly, and
crawled on his elbows so that he was half-hidden under a bed.

"Let me guess," Zeldo said. "Something from Vietnam."