So it is with some sadness, but no regret, that I announce my decision to withdraw from the race for district attorney.
“I do not have the heart to wage the brutal, personal, negative campaign that it would be necessary to wage to prevail over my opponent. I have closed my campaign offices and ordered my staff to immediately cease all campaign activities.
“At this time, it is my intention to retire from public office to spend more time with my family. I wish Godspeed to my opponent.”
No mention of the untimely demise of Roddy O’Leary in the announcement. I asked, “Why?”
“You just read why.”
I handed back his bombshell. “I also read today that I’ve been pursued by a deranged stalker, so don’t push any more fiction on me. What happened? You have a talk with Jesus?”
“I had a meeting all right. But it wasn’t with Jesus.” He flicked the caviar garnish off a canape before he ate it. “Campaign staff pow-wow. I can’t win. It’s as simple as that.”
“You still have five weeks to pull off a miracle.”
“I’m out of the miracle business.” Marovich finished off his glass in a long swallow, moved forward in a chummy posture. “I had nothing to do with what happened last night, Maggie. I fired Roddy yesterday.”
I said, “Uh huh,” as in, liar.
“I did. Hardest scene I ever went through. ‘Everything I’ve done for you,’ he says. ‘Conklin will pull up the polls,’ he says, `get the momentum going again.’ Couldn’t take it anymore. I fired his ass.”
“About time,” I said, and refilled Marovich’s glass for him.
“Had to do it.” A black, sardonic laugh. “He was going to be indicted, anyway. I knew you wouldn’t leave him alone until you had him up for murder. I cut my losses.”
“Better hope you did it in time. Why are you talking to me, anyway? Aren’t you afraid how I might use what you say?”
Suddenly he looked old rather than exhausted, his star luster fading. When he spoke, there was sad resignation in his voice.
“No one’s listening, Miss MacGowen,” he said. “I’m history as of five o’clock. I’ll get a few gasps over the news, but by tomorrow, after the follow-up, in-depth a.m. edition bullshit, I’ll become invisible. No one will care about anything I did. By day after tomorrow, ninety percent of the people who wept for Conklin on the news tonight won’t even recognize his name. You know how it works.”
“Three people are dead.”
Eyes evasive, he said, “Roddy ran amok.”
“He’s dead, so he’s taking the whole rap?” I felt sick.
“Police have found evidence linking him to two killings, Hanna Rhodes and Jerry Kelsey.”
“We a know about the immutability of evidence, though, don’t we?” I meant to be sarcastic, but there was a catch in my throat that made it sound bitter, injured. “For a long time, I tried to figure out why, in the middle of the political fight of your life, you would resurrect an old case that was such a potential bomb. Finally, it came to me.”
“Drink up,” he said.
“Remember the story about the peasant’s daughter who had to spin straw into gold or the king would kill her, kill her father, too?”
“What?” Off guard and wary.
“That’s what happened to you, isn’t it? You had to turn a disaster into political gold, or die.”
“You’re telling me a fairy story?”
“There are great moral lessons in those stories. That’s why we read them to our kids, you know.” I filled his glass again. “So, this peasant girl lies and cheats, trades her firstborn to get some elf to do the actual work for her and save her neck. Then, as her reward, the king marries her. The reward for the elf? She gets him killed.”
“What’s the moral? Cheaters prosper?”
“Hell no. She made her bed, she had to lie in it ever after-I’m not sure about the happily part. Every night, she had to fuck this greedy king who had held a death sentence over her.” I smiled up at Marovich then. “I think she got her punishment, don’t you? She couldn’t divorce the king. You can’t divorce this mess by resigning from the race or putting everything on Roddy’s ticket.”
Reaching for his wallet, Marovich motioned the waiter for the check. “I need to get home. My wife will be worried.”
There was a light drizzle falling on the street outside. The air had turned suddenly chilly. Marovich pulled his coat collar higher, rubbed his hands together. “The heat’s gone. We always get a little rain after the Santa Anas.”
We were walking back up Grand toward the courthouse parking garage. The sidewalk was still crowded. People caught by the sudden change in the weather covered their heads with whatever was available: briefcases, newspapers, jackets. I thought the rain felt wonderful; I was light-headed from the wine.
While we waited at a corner for the walk light, I asked Marovich, “What are your plans?”
“I don’t have any.”
The light changed and he took my arm as we started across the street, a genteel habit I thought.
“Miss MacGowen,” he said, then he started over. “Maggie, I know where your loyalties lie. I know you don’t care much for me. But you have to believe me when I say this one more time: My motives were sincere. The conviction of Charles Conklin was flawed. All I ever wanted to do in a quiet, legal way, was to get the conviction set aside, to have a rehearing. To salve my conscience.”
“Quiet for you is calling a press conference?”
“I didn’t call the press. Burgess did. Then Roddy tried to run herd over anything that came out. Like you say, spinning shit into gold.”
“I have never seen your name in any of the Conklin case files. Why was Conklin’s conviction on your conscience?”
“The snitch.” He still had his hand through my elbow. “Flint and Kelsey’s case hinged on the word of a snitch. Flint got good information from him, solid stuff he needed to put together a case.”
“So?”
“So, the snitch was a plant. Kelsey knew how the shooting went down, but he couldn’t get anyone to talk to him. He gave the snitch a few of the essential details, paid him off with a little help during his sentencing. It happened all the time in the old days.”
“Where did you come in?”
“Kelsey helped me out with the same snitch on two other cases. One of them turned out to be a bad conviction. The guy died in prison before I could fix things.”
“When?”
He shrugged. “Couple of years ago.”
“I thought we agreed, no more fiction.”
“Am I lying?” Offended.
“You’re fudging. When I used to go to confession, the priest never let me blame my friends for my sins. You’ve laid blame on everyone but yourself. Isn’t it time for you to take your own rap?”
“I quit. Isn’t that enough?”
“Not for Hanna Rhodes, or Jerry Kelsey, or Roddy O’Leary. Not for Mike, either. Save yourself, come clean.”
His sigh was not a denial. The drizzle turned into showers, eroding the perfect contours of his hair, wilting his shirt. I was thinking about the load he had been carrying, thinking what a pathetic pud he was to believe he could have pulled it off, when he gripped my arm more firmly.
“You’re tough. But I feel better talking to you. If you don’t have plans, you want to get a bite somewhere?”
“Won’t your wife be worried?”
“Yes, she’s worried.” He wiped rain from his eyes. “I called her, told her my decision to resign. She’s worried I’m going to be underfoot for a while.”
“I have to go home,” I said, shivering now, soaked through. “My family is expecting me.”
The garage ramp was slick, oil mixed with rain. I was concentrating on keeping my footing, but he was intent on me, studying me with such intensity that I grew uncomfortable. He seemed to be looking for some answer that maybe I was withholding from him.