Up in Smoke (28 page)

Bernie dashed up carrying a backpack and a briefcase. “Sorry, I'm late. You okay?” Transferring the briefcase to the hand with the backpack, he took her arm as though knowing she was thinking of defecting.

A limo drove up with Jack, Molly, and Nora, followed by the highway patrol and then a town car with Todd and Leon and Hadley. They all trooped up the stairs and into the plane.

Cass sat next to Bernie. “Tell me again why we're going to Florida.”

“Campaigning.”

“Why am I going?”

“Keep you involved.”

The engine sputtered, the plane shuddered and started bumping along the runway. It took off and angled low to the southwest, nosed up through dark space and leveled off. It was a noisy little jet that made conversation difficult. She closed her eyes and must have slept, because the next thing she knew, there was sunshine and they were in Florida.

Later Wednesday morning, Cass and Bernie, heads together, were watching his handheld television on the patio by the hotel swimming pool. Todd and Leon were crowding behind them trying to see.

“Turn it up a little.” Todd took off his glasses, held them up to squint at the lenses and put them back on.

“I am proud to announce,” Senator Halderbreck said, with a politician's smile, “that former Governor Church Harnes has agreed to endorse my candidacy. Not only endorse, ladies and gentlemen, but he will chair my efforts here in Florida. The citizens of this great state know full well that Governor Harnes has no tolerance for games. He is a man who steps up when he sees a need.”

“Isn't he dead?” Leon unpeeled the wrapper from a stick of gum and popped it in his mouth.

Cass squinted at the tiny television as Harnes stepped up to the microphone. Tall, with dark piercing eyes, hawk nose, heavy eyebrows, dark suit. He looked like a religious fanatic or a guru seeing visions after twelve days of fasting.

“Governor,” a cookie stuck a microphone in his face, “what brought you back to politics after all this time?”

“There is a serious need here. Electing a president. President, ladies and gentlemen. We are in the business of choosing the most powerful man in the world. What this country needs is a serious candidate, one that can step right into that position and take charge. Some of you may remember a few years back when Florida was notable, some might say notorious, in electing the president. This time, we need to get involved ahead of time.”

A ripple of laughter.

“Governor, what do you think of Jackson Garrett? You think he can step in and take charge, if he's elected?”

“The only place he's going to step is down. You think we can get the authorities to charge him with that?”

When the laughter cooled, he said, “Seriously, I know that Governor Garrett is a good man but, friends, good just isn't good enough and we have an outstanding man right here.” His hand groped around a bit in search of the outstanding man he was hawking to the crowd and clamped on Halderbreck's sleeve. He dragged Halderbreck forward and threw an arm around his shoulder. Halderbreck looked rather anemic next to Harnes's flamboyance.

“This man. He's willing to tell it like it is, straight, no political double-talk.”

“Senator, are you considering Governor Harnes as a running mate?”

“Too soon, folks, too soon,” Halderbreck said. “I only got him to agree to this much last night, but, I gotta tell ya, this is the caliber of man the Halderbreck administration wants.”

“Hey, hey, hold on there. You only paid me for today.” Governor Harnes cuffed Halderbreck playfully on the chin, then turned serious. “But I'm going to be out there telling the American people this is the man we want in the White House.”

Todd's cell phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket. “Yeah, Governor, we just saw it. Same old bullshit … no … no … yeah … later.”

“Why isn't Harnes running?” Cass said.

“Well, sweetie, that's politics,” Todd said.

“Do you think it'll make any difference down here?” Bernie turned off the tiny television and stuck it in his backpack.

“When did an endorsement make a difference?”

“What did the governor think?” Leon asked.

“He didn't see it, he was off listening to bible thumpers. Now, if Harnes is going to be telling the American public who to vote for, how come he's just now getting into camp?” Bernie said.

“Who knows,” Todd said.

“Does it matter?” Cass asked.

“Fuck, yeah, it matters. Anything these assholes do gets my attention.”

“Been to Disney World yet?” Bernie grinned.

“I'm saving it for my afternoon off. Speaking of days off, you ever gonna return my jacket?”

“I keep forgetting. As soon as we get back to Hampstead.”

“Right. Don't forget.” Todd yelled at the waiter across the patio to bring more coffee. “What else have Halderbreck's people got? What's their strategy? I can't figure out what they're doing.”

“That's probably the idea. Let's hope they can't figure out what we're doing either.”

“Neither can I,” Todd said. “Listen, we gotta go. The governor is about to go on.”

The all piled into the car and drove to a senior center somewhere in Florida. Cass thought even Bernie probably couldn't come up with the name of the town right offhand.

The room was large, walls a depressing prison-shade green, light struggled through narrow crank-opened windows that probably hadn't been cleaned since the Eisenhower administration. Long rows of metal tables filled the center of the room and stacks of folding chairs leaned in one corner. Apparently, everyone had to get his own chair. The only decorations were the American flag and a bulletin board with photos of a bus trip to the race track and announcements for coming events. Bingo, relaxation methods, singles night, weight-lifting for everyone, dance instruction.

The place was depressed and so was Bernie. “This is not going to be our finest hour,” he whispered to Cass. She and Bernie had declined the boxed lunches and stood just outside the wide doorway with the press.

Jack was sitting at a folding table, box lunch in front of him. People at his table and the tables surrounding him were poking into boxes of their own. Cass wondered how long those boxes had been sitting out and hoped they had nothing potentially lethal inside like tuna salad. Jack was nodding and listening respectfully.

The whole scene seemed absurd in some surreal way and she wondered why she wasn't home getting rid of unneeded belongings instead of here watching Jack Garrett eat a sandwich with a roomful of people who all had white or gray hair or a color so improbable genetics had never heard of it. She wondered how Monty the cat and Carmen the dog were getting along without her. Why was Jack here? This was his response to Senator Halderbreck and a forgotten former governor? The more she saw of politics, the more she didn't understand and she was beginning to wonder if Bernie, or even Todd, the wizard of campaign managers, understood anything.

A scrawny man with a buzz cut so short his pink scalp showed through thin white hair got up to introduce Jack. “Anybody remember Jack Kennedy?” Claps and cheers. “Well, we got us somebody a lot like him right here in this room. Charm. Charisma.” He smiled with a lot of very white teeth. “You all didn't think I knew that word, did you?”

Bigger burst of claps and cheers, more for the introducer than for Jack, Cass thought. Jack got up. He mumbled, he rambled and seemed like he'd forgotten what he'd meant to say. Since Wakely died some of the fire and enthusiasm had gone. Jack had a dark look in his eyes and his zeal for speaking had lost its edge. Grieving for his lifelong friend, she thought. She knew about grieving. It never got finished. You think it's over and you pretend like you're living and then—maybe a scent, a sound, or a bit of music—and grief has its fangs in your throat again.

Then Jack started talking, just talking, not making a speech. “I want to say a few words about my opponent, Senator Halderbreck.” Jack waited a beat. “He's a good man. A man of his word.” Jack shook his head. “But there are some things we disagree on. I want to tell you about them, because they're important to you.”

Back in stride, Cass thought, amazed as always at how he reached people and pulled them in. He mentioned cuts in cost of living adjustments for Social Security. A general grumble went through the room like a low hum.
Can't manage now. Prices keep going up.

“… and we disagree about Medicare. Senator Halderbreck wants you to pay more…”

Another hum, this one louder. “We always pay more and those bastards always pay less.”

“… area where we disagree and that's the Middle East. We have got to give more attention to the consequences of our actions and by that I mean…”

When Jack finished speaking, the crows started in on Bernie while Jack shook hands, hugged a frail woman, and talked informally with the crowd gathered around him. He was his old self, listening, touching, caring. A woman in a wheelchair smiled up at him and when he bent slightly toward her, she put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him close enough to kiss his cheek. He kissed her cheek in return and she blushed like a girl.

Cass couldn't match up this man with Jackson Garrett, the man she had thought she'd marry. When she tried to superimpose this figure over the man she used to know, the man who was going to be her law partner and they were going to represent the poor and downtrodden, the edges blurred and she could only see the shadow of a stranger, an eerie reshaping of the man she thought she knew into a wraith who only resembled him slightly. The agony she'd felt when he didn't return to her after that forest fire in Montana seemed, looking back on it, pale compared to the pain she'd endured when Ted and Laura died. How things change, she mused.

Jack patted the elderly woman's shoulder and straightened. For an instant, she caught a look of—? Remorse? Did the wheelchair remind him of his old friend? Why remorse? Did he feel he hadn't done enough when Wakely was alive? Maybe she imagined it. Or maybe he had a pain in his back and regretted bending over.

32

The Coffee Cup, packed with media people, was doing a brisk lunch business when Parkhurst came in. Phyllis sent him a smile and nodded at the doorway to her left. He went into the empty banquet room and sat at one of the round tables.

It took her a minute or two to get to him. “I thought you'd like it better in here. It's quieter. I'll guard the door so they can't get in. I swear they're like a pack of hyenas. In your face, in your face, in your face. I don't know how you stand it. If I toted a gun, I'd probably shoot the bunch of them.”

“Don't think I haven't thought of it.” Without looking at the menu, he ordered a turkey sandwich, fries and coffee. She scribbled on her pad in that awkward-looking way of the left-handed. A minute or two later she came back with a thick white mug and filled it with coffee. He took a sip, it wasn't any better than what he'd been drinking all morning, and did nothing to get rid of the taste and smell of rot. When the food came, his appetite fluttered and dissipated.

Susan, ignoring questions and fighting off microphones stuck in her face, slipped through the door and sat across from him. “God, they never give up. I had to sneak out the back and then I run into them here.” She rubbed her temples. “How was the autopsy?”

“Went well. You should have been there. Nothing like ripping open a body and lifting out parcels of insides to make you think of lunch. You want something?”

She snagged a fry from his plate before he could splatter catsup all over them and popped it in her mouth.

“That makes an even thirty thousand you owe me. Why don't you ever buy your own?”

She looked horrified. “All that fat and salt? It'll kill you.” She lifted another.

When Phyllis came back, Susan asked for two eggs over easy, sausage links, and coffee.

“Fat and salt?” Parkhurst said.

“What can I say? An undeniable craving. I'm weak.”

Phyllis set a mug in front of her, filled it with coffee and refilled Parkhurst's. Susan put both hands around the mug to warm them. “Has Demarco found the dog?”

“No sign of it.” Parkhurst upended the catsup bottle and gave it a good smack, dumping red stuff all over the fries. “Some of the blood in her garage belongs to a dog, so it was injured.”

“Maybe he killed it, too.”

“If he did, where's the body?”

“He took it away?”

“Why?' Parkhurst bit into his sandwich and chewed.

“It tried to protect her. It was in the way, it could identify him?”

He laughed. “A talking dog maybe?”

“Hey, there are some bloodhounds that can now give evidence in court.”

He gave her a sour look and bit off another hunk of his sandwich. “And the girl? Why was she hiding? Think she can identify him, too?”

“I don't know why you're in such a shitty mood, but it's beginning to annoy me.”

“As opposed to my usual sunny self?”

She took a manila envelope from her shoulder bag and opened it. “Crime scene photos,” she said. “Wakely Fromm. These are copies.”

She snapped down a photo and another and another and another until they formed a half-circle around his plate. Stark, harsh, ugly photos. What was left of Wakely Fromm, listing to one side in his wheelchair, mouth open, right arm hanging down. Gun on the floor. “You see anything there to suggest homicide not suicide?”

He pushed the remains of his sandwich and fries to one side. An autopsy just before lunch might be a good way to diet. He focused on the photos and wondered why she was so bitchy.

The nagging grain of sand scratching just out of reach wouldn't let him drop it and go along with suicide. He couldn't just do the paperwork and hand what was left of Fromm over to whoever was going to spring for burial. Probably his good buddy Governor Jackson Garrett. And it bothered him that Sean Donovan had found the body. Good way to account for fingerprints or fibers, any incriminating evidence at the scene.