The Nomination (33 page)

She pressed the handkerchief against her throat. “These guys with knives and guns,” she said, “they're here to negotiate?”

He smiled. “I don't think that was their original intent.”

“Allow me to explain,” said the man in the chair.

“Yes, please,” said Jessie.

“My name is Mr. Black,” said the man. “That man you escorted in here is Mr. White. I assume you met Mr. Green outside.”

Jessie shrugged. “What are you negotiating?”

“Mr. Cassidy has kindly agreed not to publish his very interesting story, or to release any of his documentation, or, in fact, to make public any details about it whatsoever for eighteen months.” He looked at Mac. “Eighteen months, we said, right?”

“A year from next December,” said Mac.

“We, for our part,” said Mr. Black, “have agreed not to kill Mr. Cassidy, or young Katie, here, or you, either, Ms. Church.”

“Sounds like a good deal all around,” said Jessie.

Mr. Black smiled. “You are a cynic, Ms. Church. But a realist, I'm sure. So you must see how well this will work out for everybody.”

“And why didn't you kill us?”

Mr. Black gestured with his gun toward Mac. “Tell her, Mr. Cassidy.”

“Simone's tapes,” he said. “If anything happens to any of us, I have left instructions that they should immediately be released to key representatives of the media, along with the photographs and documents plus my summary of the facts contained in the tapes.”

“And if nothing happens to us?”

“The tapes will stay where they are—in a safe in a lawyer's office in New York City.”

“For eighteen months,” said Jessie. “That's a year from December. A month after the next presidential election.”

Mr. Black smiled. “Smart girl.”

“It would be unreasonable,” said Mac, “to expect us never to publish Simone's story. On the other hand,” he added, “if we were to leak any information before a year from December, if we didn't keep up our end of the bargain . . .”

Mr. Black raised his gun, pointed it at Katie, and said, “Bang, bang.”

Katie, Jessie observed, had squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

“So it's a stalemate,” said Jessie.

“It's a fair deal all around,” said Mr. Black.

Jessie arched her eyebrows. “Is it?”

“Excuse me?” he said.

“What do I get out of it?”

“You get to live, Ms. Church.”

“I mean,” she said, “Cassidy, here, he ends up publishing his story, making a bunch of money, buying his daughter a car, putting her through college. You, you get the time you need to do whatever it is you have to do. So what about me?”

Mr. Black smiled. “Is there something we can do for you, Ms. Church?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Jessie, “there are a couple of things.”

J
udge Thomas Larrigan slouched in his leather desk chair. He had his feet propped up on his desk and his necktie pulled loose, and he was gazing out of his big office window at the Boston Inner Harbor. It was one of those sultry early-summer afternoons. Sailboats and motorboats skittered over the water, and fishermen armed with surf rods were silhouettes perched on the rocks out at the end of the jetty. Larrigan thought they looked like black insects with long feelers.

He was feeling pretty relaxed, for a change.

The slanting rays of the sun glinted off the water, and a breeze had sprung up, riffling its surface with little whitecaps. Thick thunderheads were building on the horizon.

There were no trials scheduled for the next day, which was the Friday before the long Independence Day weekend. Judge Larrigan intended to drive down to his summer place in Orleans on the Cape to join his wife and kids that evening. He already had his overnighter packed and stowed in the trunk of his car along with his golf clubs. He planned to have a leisurely dinner at the club and leave for the Cape around eight, after the rush-hour traffic had thinned out.

It would be good to get away from the courthouse, where even the other judges had begun looking at him and speaking to him differently. It wasn't “Tom” anymore. Now they called him “Judge.” He wasn't one of them anymore. He was the next Supreme Court Justice.

Not that he minded. In fact, he loved it.

It was really going to happen. All the impediments had been removed.

Larrigan smiled. “Justice Larrigan,” he said aloud, savoring the sound of it.

He smiled, took a sip of water, and checked his cell phone again.

He still had that one damn message.

It was from Eddie Moran.

He'd rather ignore it. Moran had served his purpose, and he'd been paid. Things were square between them, and Thomas Larrigan didn't want anything to do with Eddie Moran anymore.

But, of course, it wasn't that simple.

He replayed the message. “We need to talk,” Eddie said. “It's important. The usual place, six-thirty.”

The usual place was the parking garage off Summer Street.

Larrigan glanced at his wristwatch. It was almost quarter of six. He better get going. He had forty-five minutes to pick up his car in the courthouse garage and drive to Summer Street where neither he nor his car would be recognized. He'd give Eddie Moran five minutes. Justice Thomas Larrigan had more important things to think about.

LARRIGAN PULLED INTO the parking garage at six-twenty-five. He found an empty slot next to a concrete pillar on the third level. A big SUV was parked beside him, and on the other side of the pillar was some kind of van.

With his side window rolled down, he could hear the rhythmic
blip-blip
of water dripping into a puddle on the concrete floor. Now and then distant footsteps echoed hollowly, followed by the muffled sound of a car door slamming and then an engine starting up. The place was dim and dank and shadowy. The weak yellow light from the bulbs in the ceiling just seemed to exaggerate the darkness and sense of isolation in the garage.

Suddenly the passenger door clicked open and Eddie Moran slid in beside him.

“Jesus,” said Larrigan. “I didn't see you coming. You don't have to be so damn sneaky.” He glanced at his watch. Six-thirty on the dot. “And do you always have to be so damn punctual?”

“Can't help it,” said Moran. “I'm just a sneaky, on-time kind of guy, you know? Blame the United States Marines. So how you doin'?”

“Good,” said Larrigan. “Excellent.”

“Well, that's terrific,” said Moran. “Me, I'm good, too.”

Larrigan shrugged. “I'm glad.” He was looking out the side window at the big concrete pillar right beside the car. Somebody had spray-painted “Yankees Suck” on it with red paint.

“I wasn't sure you cared.”

“Of course I care,” said Larrigan.

“You and me,” said Moran, “we go way back. Our fortunes are linked, you might say.”

“You've been a loyal friend,” said Larrigan. “I appreciate everything you've done.” He noticed how the paint had dribbled down off the bottoms of the red letters. It looked like they were bleeding. “So what's up, Eddie? What's on your mind?”

“Like you say,” said Moran, “I've been loyal friend. I'm glad you realize it. But you know, when it comes down to it, loyalty only goes so far. For example, you'd betray me in a minute.”

“Jesus, Eddie, I wouldn't—”

“It's okay,” said Moran. “That's how it is. I understand. I guess about now you're thinking it's time to separate yourself from your old war buddy, who's a pretty crude character, hardly a suitable friend for a Justice of the Supreme Court.”

Larrigan turned to look at him. “I wasn't—”

“No,” said Moran. “It's good. I wouldn't hang around with me, either, if I was you. You gotta take care of number one. Nobody blames anybody for doing what needs to be done. It's all about survival.”

“I'd never betray you,” said Larrigan. He turned away to gaze out the side window, looking at the big pillar, reluctant to look at Moran's face. “I'm truly grateful for everything. But in a way, you're right. There comes a time when . . .”

He shrugged, sighed, and turned again to face Eddie Moran. And that's when he saw the big square handgun that Moran was holding on his lap.

“What the hell is that?” said Larrigan.

“It's a Marine .45. You still got yours, don't you?”

“No.” Larrigan shook his head. “So what's with the gun?”

“For one thing,” Moran said, “I never felt right, lying about your fucking eye so you could get a medal.” He shrugged and raised the gun.

A .45 was serious overkill, Moran was thinking. It made a dimesized hole just in front of Larrigan's right ear where Moran had pressed the muzzle. But compared to the other side of the man's head, the entry wound was a pinprick. The whole left side of the judge's head was pretty much blown away. Splashes of blood and clots of brain and pieces of hair and bone were splattered all over the inside of the car. Droplets of blood were even spattered on the concrete pillar outside the open window.

Eddie Moran had taken the Marine-issue sidearm from the body of a buddy of his. It happened over there about thirty-five years ago. Their squad was walking single file along a jungle path. It was nighttime, moonless, dark as death.

Carlos was his name. Carlos ... something Hispanic. He was a private. What the hell was his last name? Anyway, Carlos was the man directly in front of Sgt. Moran, and so he was the one who happened to step on the mine and get both legs blown off.

Sanchez. That was it. PFC Carlos Sanchez. Had an Anglo girlfriend. A pretty blonde, wore a cheerleader's uniform in the picture Sanchez carried inside his helmet. Sanchez was barely eighteen. He died fast. Just bled out right there beside the path.

The .45 could never be traced. It was an unregistered standardissue Marine sidearm from that old war. It could've been Thomas Larrigan's gun.

Moran's ears were still ringing. A .45 made a head-splitting explosion anyway, but inside an automobile in a concrete parking garage it sounded like a bomb went off.

What was left of Larrigan's head was thrown back and sideways. The whole front of his jacket and shirt and necktie was soaked with blood.

It would've been best if he somehow could have convinced the judge to write down how depressed he'd been, left something that would pass as a suicide note, but Moran figured there were people—his wife, his secretary, some of his colleagues, probably—who'd say how the judge had been tense and stressed lately, understandable with the big nomination and everything, and they would mention it to whoever did the investigation.

Yes
, they'd say,
ever since the president announced the nomination, Thomas hasn't been himself. Certainly not his usual upbeat, outgoing self.

Still, I can't believe he'd go and do something like this. You never know, huh?

Moran picked up the spent cartridge, stuck it in his pocket, and replaced it with a fresh bullet in the gun's clip. Then he picked up Larrigan's right hand and wrapped it around the handle of the big automatic. He wedged the dead man's forefinger inside the trigger guard, and then, holding the judge's hand with both of his own, Moran pointed the gun out the window and aimed it up toward the top of the wall at the distant end of the garage. Then he turned his face away, mentally braced himself for another ear-splitting explosion, and pulled the trigger.

Pretty much the way he did it with the blonde when he shot Li An. As far as he knew, it worked that time.

If they did it right, forensics would find the empty cartridge case from the second shot on the floor of the car where the gun had ejected it, and they'd test Larrigan's hand and the sleeve of his jacket for gunpowder residue. Moran knew that they didn't always do it right. But the suicide of somebody like Judge Larrigan—especially a suicide without a note—would most likely get investigated pretty thoroughly.

He let Larrigan's arm fall to his side. The .45 slipped out and dropped onto the seat of the car, and Moran left it right there.

Moran hooked his little finger around the inside handle, shouldered the car door open, and slid out. He shut the door with a shove of his hip, then rubbed the palm of his hand over the outside door handle, leaving it smudged. Didn't want to wipe it clean. That would raise questions.

He stood there for a minute, listening. No voices. No echo of footsteps. No distant siren.

Moran walked to the stairway, went up to the fourth level, and got into his car. He turned on the dome light and checked his face in the rearview mirror. A few coagulated drops of Larrigan's blood speckled his forehead. He spit on handkerchief and wiped them away. There was some blood splatter on his shirt, too. He pulled on the nylon windbreaker he kept in the backseat and zipped it to his throat.

He put on his thick horn-rimmed glasses and screwed a Red Sox cap onto his head. Then he drove down to the lower level and then he was out, free and clear, job done, obligations fulfilled, debts paid.

Eddie Moran had done everything Mr. Black's way, and now they were even.

HOWIE COHEN WAS sitting at his desk in the prison library, as he did every morning. He figured that by the time they let him out—in twenty-two years, four months, and eleven days, if he behaved himself, which was easy enough, and managed to live that long, which was extremely doubtful—he might complete the changeover from the card catalog to the computer.

Most mornings Cohen enjoyed entering the data. He found the library a pleasant place. It was quiet there, and everybody left him alone. The work required his full attention. It passed the time. It was kind of gratifying, too. He liked to be able to measure what he'd accomplished. Now he was working on the fiction, which was alphabetical by the author's last name. He was up to the letter K. He'd been working in the library for seven months. He was taking his time with it, working slow and steady, getting everything just right. Howie Cohen had nothing but time.