“My husband-”
“Fuck him.”
She held up for another second or so and then she lost it. Suddenly. As if she’d been stabbed in the heart and the pain had just hit her. It seemed like the beautiful face aged ten years in the seconds that she held back the tears, and then they came out in wracking sobs.
“My baby. My poor little baby. She needs so much help. She needs me and I don’t know where she is! I have to tell her! I have to tell her!”
“Tell her what?” Neal asked, and if she said something like “That I love her,” he was about ready to smack her in the mouth.
“On top of everything else, what she must be thinking! I have to tell her, at least that.”
“Tell her what, Mrs. Chase?”
She settled herself down, he had to give her credit for that. She drew herself back from the edge of hysteria and settled down to help her daughter. She caught her breath and spoke quietly-slowly.
“He’s not her father.”
Whoa and double whoa.
She had turned around while Neal put his clothes on, and she sat patiently while he poured himself a drink and tossed down half of it. If he smoked, he would have lit one up.
“Does the Senator know that Allie isn’t his?”
She nodded.
“Since when?”
“I suppose Allie was eight or nine. We had a terrible fight. I threw it at him.”
“But you never told Allie.”
“I’d been meaning to.”
“Where’s the note, Mrs. Chase?”
“In a safe-deposit box-my own.”
Smart lady.
“Does anyone else know about it?”
“No.”
“So the Senator doesn’t know that you know that-”
She shook her head. “I haven’t said anything to him about it. If I did, I’d have to leave him, and if I left him, I wouldn’t get the help I need to find Allie, would I?”
No, lady, you probably wouldn’t.
“Are you going to the police?” she asked.
“No.”
Because you’re right, Mrs. Chase. If I take this to the cops, it’s all over. I’m off the case, the Senator is out of office, Friends loses interest, and Allie gets to read about it in the foreign edition of Newsweek and will bury herself even deeper than she already has. No winners.
So the basic rules apply. John Chase is a wealthy member of the U.S. Senate, and he might be President someday, and he has money in the bank. So he gets to rape his stepdaughter and get away with it and also get someone like me to clean it all up. Neal Carey, Janitor to the Rich and Powerful.
And that son of a bitch is counting on Allie’s shame to shut her up while she’s posing for “The Waltons Go to Washington” pictures, and then he’ll stick her away in some really faraway school someplace, maybe one of those Swiss jobs. And I’m going to help him do it. Because it’s better than having that kid out there thinking she’s had sex with her own father and quite possibly dying over it. And because I want to finish college one of these days.
“There’s something else to think about, Mrs. Chase. If Allie needs drugs, and food and shelter and all that, and she doesn’t have money… she’ll do anything to get it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Allie would never do that.”
“Yes, she would. You’re doing it. I’m doing it.” And we ain’t even haggling over the price.
Neal lay awake for most of what was left of the night. He hadn’t had dreams about the Halperin kid for months, and he didn’t want to start again. But when he closed his eyes, he saw the kid again, and thought about the “ifs.” If they had only let the kid be what he was-an amiable, not overly bright gay teenager. If they had treated the case as more than a ground ball and sent two guys instead of just Neal. If only room service hadn’t been closed that night.
He gave up trying to sleep around five, took a wake-up shower, said a quick goodbye to Elizabeth Chase, and asked for a ride downtown. The driver let him off at an Avis counter, Neal got lost about fifteen times before he found Scott Mackensen’s school in Connecticut.
5
Scott mackensen was running to lacrosse practice.
“Coach will kill me if I’m late again,” he said to Neal Carey, who thought the boy was a little too eager to get going.
Neal looked behind him to the beautifully tended green fields where several boys tossed the ball among them in studied insouciance.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Neal lied.
“That’s worth five minutes of stadium steps,” Scott answered. He was tall, muscular, clear-eyed Jack Armstrong and all that shit, but Neal saw that those clear eyes looked scared. He knew then that there was no hurry.
“Later, maybe?” he asked.
Scott waged a brief skirmish with his conscience. Neal had seen it a few hundred times. Duty versus self-interest. Scott was just young enough that duty had a shot at winning, and Neal didn’t want to push a quick decision. He waited.
“There’s a coffee shop in the village-The Copper Donkey. Give me two hours.” Scott backed away as he talked.
“You got it,” Neal said as Scott turned and ran toward the practice field.
Maybe I should have let The Man send me to boarding school, Neal thought as he walked back to his rented car. The Barker School looked pretty nice. “Nestled in the rolling hills of northwest Connecticut,” the brochure had doubtless proclaimed, and indeed, the Berkshire foothills framed the sprawling campus.
Neal slipped into the rented Nova, put it in drive thinking it was reverse, and smacked the front bumper into a white post placed there precisely for such ineptitude. He hated to drive and had done so only because he couldn’t screw Graham into making the trip.
“Connecticut?” Graham had said in dismissal. “They got bees in Connecticut.”
Neal found The Copper Donkey without major mishap, but he took ten minutes to parallel park on the narrow village street. (Twenty bucks had gotten him past that part on the driver’s test.) The village, Old Farmstead, was bona fide New England quaint. Colonial and Victorian houses, all beautifully kept, competed for the oohs and aahs of tourists. Neal didn’t ooh or aah. He had his fill of quaint from the plumbing in his building.
The Copper Donkey catered to the private-school crowd. The boys came over from Barker, and the girls from nearby Miss Clifton’s, which Neal thought sounded like an instant muffin mix, but which had been one of Allie’s pit stops on her race through the academic elite. He figured that even the patient folk at the Donkey wouldn’t appreciate him nursing a cup of coffee for an hour and a half, so be wandered off in search of a bookstore. He found Bookes, which surprised him by having the good sense to stock John MacDonald’s latest. He found a quaint sidewalk bench and settled down to commiserate with Travis McGee.
He and Travis got through a quick hour with no trouble. (Well, none for Neal. Lots for Travis.) Neal went into the Donkey and got a booth at the back.
Scott arrived almost on time. He had showered and changed, and looked fresh and even younger in a white sweater, stone-washed jeans, and brown loafers. He looked around for a moment, spotted Neal, then looked around again to see who else was there. Nobody was.
Sitting down, he started right in. “I don’t know, maybe I should never have said anything. First Mr. Chase, then the other guy, now you. I don’t want to get involved with the police. I just got accepted to Brown.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“Then I don’t have to talk to you.”
“No. Which other guy?”
“A big guy. Kind of young. Older than you, though.”
“Tall, heavyset, curly black hair? Pushy?”
Scott nodded. “Real pushy.”
I’ll kill Levine, Neal thought.
“Do you want something?” Neal asked, gesturing at the menu.
“I’ll have some coffee. I have an exam tomorrow.”
Neal signaled the waitress, pointing at his own cup and Scott. She brought the coffee over quickly.
“I just want to check a few details,” Neal said.