Jericho's Fall (26 page)

“Tish, you could get in trouble!”

Another hooting laugh. “Why? I’m not bound by their secrecy rules. I’m legally free to repeat anything I hear, and so are you.”

“Legally,” Beck muttered.

“Say again?”

“Nothing.” How do you tell your best friend that your phone is tapped? Especially when you’re talking on it. “Tish, I have to go. I’ll call you when I’m home. Please don’t discuss this with anybody else.”

“Now you sound like the memo my friend got.”

“Every now and then,” said Beck, borrowing from Jericho, “the government of the United States is actually right.”

(ii)

Sheriff Garvey stopped by. He was very somber. He wanted to see Jericho, but Jericho was not available, so he settled for the sisters. Rebecca tried to make herself scarce, on the theory that this was family business and she was leaving tomorrow, but the sheriff said she might as well hear this, too. So they sat in the great room, over near the window with the spectacular mountain view, and listened quietly as the man the Former Everything had elected explained that Jericho would soon be arrested.

“Mr. Pesky took a turn for the worse during the night. He already had a couple of broken bones after his fall from the roof. What your father did to him—well, that made it a whole lot worse. There’s some internal injuries.”

“The injuries could be from the fall,” Audrey objected.

“The doctors say they
are
from the fall. They’ve been aggravated, is all. He’s being airlifted to Denver”—a melodramatic glance at his watch—“even as we speak.”

The women looked at one another. The atmosphere in the room was ugly, and Beck knew that as soon as Garvey was gone it would get a lot uglier.

“Now, everybody knows Mr. Ainsley is sick,” the sheriff continued, “and, well, he is who he is. Nobody’s in a hurry. He’s not going anywhere. The State’s Attorney will convene a grand jury, and that’ll take time. Maybe the grand jury will decide he’s delusional, Miss Ainsley, just like you said last night. But the State’s Attorney, well, she’s gonna push hard. She’s made that clear. A prosecutor doesn’t get all that many shots at a rich white guy. Sending the former head of the CIA to prison for assault is the kind of thing that can get you your own talk show on CNN or Fox. And—well, he did do it, after all.”

“Yes,” said Pamela, jaw jutting grimly. “He did.”

“The only thing is—nobody seems to know why.”

“I told you,” Audrey began.

“Right. That he’s delusional. My Deputy Pete Mundy doesn’t happen to agree. My deputy thinks Mr. Ainsley wanted actual information, and right now the State’s Attorney is listening to him, not to me. The only way I can help is if you tell me what his real motive was. What he’s been up to. Why so much craziness is happening up here. What he wanted from Mr. Pesky.”

“No idea,” said Audrey.

“None,” said Beck.

“He wanted to know who Pesky was working for,” said Pamela. The other women turned on her in dismay, but she was not done. “And, no, he didn’t tell us whatever he found out. If he found out anything.
I doubt that he did. From what Rebecca says, he wasn’t in the room very long.”

The sheriff looked more dismayed than ever. “My deputy reports that when he arrived on the scene and broke down the door, Mr. Ainsley said, ‘We’re done here.’ Now, my deputy has the State’s Attorney believing that meant he already had, uh, extracted whatever information he was looking for.” He opened his jacket. “Look. I’m not wearing a wire. I’m not taking notes. But I need something to take back to the State’s Attorney. Something to persuade her that Mr. Ainsley was acting”—he squinted at the ceiling, searching for the phrase—“out of some rational fear. Isn’t there anything you can tell me? About what he’s been doing?”

Audrey and Beck exchanged glances of growing kinship, and growing suspicion, but once again Pamela marched into the breach.

“We don’t know what he’s been doing, but we do know he’s been worrying a lot. He thinks people are out to get him. Maybe they are. But he just sits up in that room all day and broods and broods.” Where had she summoned those tears from? Pamela was no crier. “He might not be delusional, Sheriff, but he’s not well. It’s not just the cancer. It’s more than that. My father spent his career sniffing out other people’s conspiracies and planning his own. It’s how he sees the world. He never believed Pesky was taking those pictures on behalf of a magazine. None of us did.” Drawing the others, unwilling, into what Beck thought of already as her treachery. “You say the State’s Attorney wants an arrest. Fine. We can’t stop her. But we’ve been complaining for weeks about trespassers, and your department has done squat to protect us. If my father has gone off the deep end, I think you and your deputies have to shoulder some of the blame.”

“What are you—”

Her voice was now coldness itself. Pamela could do all the moods at once, a talent that gave her far too many weapons for ordinary mortals to take on in conversation. “As soon as you walk out that door, Sheriff— and I would like that to be momentarily—I am getting on the phone to everybody I know in the media. And believe me, Sheriff, I know everybody.
I am giving them all the same story. That the former Director of Central Intelligence, the former Secretary of Defense, has been endlessly harassed during his dying months, and the county sheriff has done nothing to protect him. Finally, he snapped, and, yes, what happened to Mr. Pesky is unforgivable, but the truth is, if the county sheriff had done his job—”

Everybody was standing. Somehow Pamela had maneuvered the group halfway to the door.

“—well, then, Mr. Pesky would never have been on the property, to say nothing of the roof. Oh, and another thing. This is Colorado. Mr. Pesky was a home invader. My father had the right to use deadly force against him.”

“Not once he was off the property!”

Her smile was silky. “I suspect that the media will obscure that particular detail. You know how they are.”

When the sheriff had gone, Pamela lit into the other two women. “Help me out next time. Don’t just sit there like bumps on a log.” She was breathing very hard. “Listen to me. Dad might be a bastard, but they are not arresting him. No chance. We are not going to let that happen. Is that clear?”

Astonished, they watched her stalk up the stairs. And it occurred to Rebecca that Pamela’s anger this time was not at the other women. It was Jericho himself who was the object of her fury. Perhaps for the past; perhaps for the present; perhaps it made no difference. Fathers whose frustrations marked their wives could hardly be expected to be honored by their daughters. She remembered, again, how her mother had shaved her husband before his death. Beck, watching, had thought her mother a fool.

(iii)

The storms had passed. They were out on the deck again, Jericho and Rebecca, enjoying the thin afternoon sun on her final day at Stone
Heights. The temperature was dropping, and the forecast for tonight called for sleet or perhaps more snow. Jericho was wrapped in, if anything, more layers than yesterday. He was coughing a lot, too, and she kept urging him to go inside. He refused, and it occurred to her that he was showing signs of the petulance with which he often masked unhappiness.

“So Dak’s leaving us,” he said, when he heard about last night. “Well, well. I guess I scared him off, didn’t I?” Jericho’s eyes followed a small animal skittering along the edge of the woods. He laughed. “It’s driving them nuts, isn’t it? That they can’t figure it out.”

“You’re having fun.”

“I hope so.”

“I talked to your cousin,” she said quietly.

His bonhomie vanished. “What did the bitch want? The same thing as Dak, right? Talk the madman out of wrecking the nation’s security?”

“Something like that.” She discovered that she was holding his hand. “She’s worried about you.”

“The only thing my cousin is worried about is whether to run for President this next time around or the time after.”

Rebecca felt herself bristling, and was not even sure why. She snatched her hand away. “There is such a thing as love in the world, Jericho. Not everybody acts out of base motives.”

“Just me? Is that what you’re saying? Everybody else is noble, I suppose.”

“I just want to know if it’s worth it. If you really want to tell the secrets.” She returned to her question from Sunday. “Is this how you want to be remembered?”

His voice was oddly soft, a sign, she knew, of anger. “Is it my turn, Becky-Bear?”

“Yes,” she said, feeling sullen and hot, already expecting him to out-argue her.

“Fine. Number one”—he took a finger—“I told you already, I don’t particularly give a crap how I’m remembered. Two”—another finger—“if Mr. Philip Agadakos or Senator Margaret Bitch Ainsley
think I’m damaging the nation’s security, then they’re welcome to call the gendarmes and have me thrown into Leavenworth. Notice they haven’t done that. Remember not to overlook the obvious, darling.” He tried to bare his teeth in defiance, but coughed again instead. He took another finger. “Three. If nobody’s planning to hurt me, then nobody has anything to worry about, do they?”

“Are you saying that the secrets in question have nothing to do with national security?”

“Is Dak still saying they do?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe, Jericho. That reporter—your old student Lewiston Clark—he seemed to think the secrets had to do with Scondell Bloom.”

Another derisive hoot. “Now, that was one of my stupider ideas.”

“Is that what you’re hiding? How the money went…wherever it went?”

“Maybe.”

“Dak said it was impossible. There wouldn’t be written records.”

“Not written. No.”

“So what is it? Audiotape? Videotape? What?” She could not hold back. “And if you have records like that, why don’t you give them to the FBI or somebody? Why keep them for your own personal pleasure?”

“Maybe it’s not pleasure,” he snapped. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe it’s justice.”

So Beck fired the only arrow left in her quiver. “The man I used to love,” she said, forcefully, “would not be doing this.”

She had reached him. She could tell. The eyes widened and he leaned away from her, his response somewhere between fear and admiration. For a moment, she almost believed he was ready to give up the whole thing.

Then the animal cunning closed down once more, and he chuckled. “The man you loved died when you left him, Becky-Bear.” Wounding her despite the pleasant tone. He touched his chest. “The man who took his place is going to be dead in a couple of months.”

“That’s not fair!”

Jericho coughed again, then propped himself on an elbow. “Let me tell you a story, Becky-Bear. Back when I was a case officer—the sixties—I had charge of an operation that went bad. Never mind where. Eastern Europe—that’s all I can say. I was running what old Agency hands used to call a
réseau
. What you’d call a network. I had diplomatic cover, but the spies I was running didn’t. They could be arrested and tortured until they gave up the names of the rest of the members of the
réseau.”

He coughed, and for a moment had trouble sitting up, but when Beck moved close to help, he waved her away.

“Well, a couple of the members got blown. Doesn’t matter how. I met one of them. He was on the run. We met in a public park. Lots of people around. Poor man knew it was only a matter of time before the secret police got him and he wound up chained to a wall with his jaw broken and his balls wired up to the house current. He wanted to escape. Demanded money, a passport, everything. I told him none of that was possible. I was going to be expelled any day now for activities inconsistent with my diplomatic status. Then I let the other shoe drop. I told him that we couldn’t let him be taken. That we couldn’t let him blow the rest of the
réseau
. He looked around. I’d brought a couple of minor goons with me. He knew where this was going. He said, ‘But I’ve done my job! You can’t do this to me!’ All the things you’d expect. I said I was sorry, I had no choice. He tried to make a break for it. My goons got him. The last thing he said was ‘This isn’t fair!’ And it wasn’t, Becky-Bear. He was innocent. Even a hero. He had served our country and his movement, and we had to get rid of him.” His energy gave out at last, and he slid to the pillow. “It wasn’t fair, but it was real life.”

“Did that really happen?” she asked, reeling at this casual lifting of the curtain shrouding the least savory aspects of his work.

The golden eyes were hooded, unreadable. “I was in a grubby trade, Becky-Bear. Dak knows that. And you, my dear—well, don’t let yourself forget. Sometimes your own friends will kill you for the crime of doing what they ask.” He stood up. “It’s late. We should go in.”

He was plainly exhausted. Before he crossed the threshold, she put a hand on his arm. “Jericho, wait.”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Mr. Pesky. What did you find out? Did he tell you who he works for?”

“Whom. It’s the object of the preposition.”

“Did he tell you?”

“Yes,” he said, and went into the house.

But at that last moment, just before they parted, his mask had slipped for a fraction of a second. Beck had read the abject suffering in that familiar face. Maybe the cancer cells were emerging for the last battle. Maybe Jericho was still worn out from his foolish exertions of last night. Yet the romantic in her preferred a third explanation:

That Pesky had indeed told Jericho the identity of his employer; and that it was the knowledge of who had hired him that made life suddenly not worth fighting for.

CHAPTER 24
The Pin Lights

(i)

Back inside the house, the sisters were both busy. Beck had finished reading the Danticat and, although she had a briefcase full of memos for tomorrow’s meeting in Chicago, was in no mood to work. Although it was not yet dinnertime, Jericho had turned in for the night. Finally, she decided to go to the basement and shoot some pool, another joy of their time together. He used to drag her to a now vanished pool hall in town, where he would take on all comers in nine-ball as she rooted for him and, occasionally, played a rack or two. Since then, she had found that the clean clack of the balls helped her to think clearly. And that was what she needed now, a clear head.