They sat in relative darkness as the tape unreeled.
When it ended, Andrew rose and went to the bar and poured a drink for himself. He still did not offer one to Michael, who, in any case, still would have refused it.
“So?” he said.
“So you’re going,” Michael said. “And you’re taking a lot of people with you.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I want to talk a deal.”
“Why? You’ve got your fucking tape...”
“A gold mine, in fact.”
“Where’d she have the wire?”
“What difference does it make?”
“None, I guess,” Andrew said, and shrugged.
His question suddenly took on new meaning. They’d made love in that room in Connecticut. She’d been naked, he’d been inside her. So where had the wire been? A perfectly natural question. Where had she hidden the wire? Images conjured by the earlier tapes suddenly flashed on the screen of Michael’s mind.
Let’s see just how hard we can make you, all right? Let’s see what rubbing this ancient Roman ring on your cock can do, all right? My hand tight around you, the black ring rubbing against your stiff cock...
Again, Michael wanted to kill him.
“This is my offer,” he said. “You walk in and plead, or I bring down all of you.”
“Plead to what?”
“Two counts of murder, an agreed twenty-five to life on each. Consecutive.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
The satyr and the bird. Are you my satyr, Andrew? Am I your bird, Andrew? No no no, not yet, baby. Not till I want you to. Not till I say you can. Just keep looking at the ring. Just keep watching that black ring, Andrew. My hand tight on your cock and the ring moving...
Kill them both.
“If I go public with the Connecticut tape,” he said, “you’re a dead man. Your own people will learn you told all their business to a woman, they’ll get to you wherever you are. Even if you’re denied bail, they’ll reach you in jail. On the other hand, if you plead, I forget I ever heard this tape...”
“Who else has heard it?”
“Just me.”
“Who else knows about it?”
“Just Sarah.”
“Nobody in law enforcement?”
“Nobody.”
“How about the detectives working the case?”
“I said nobody.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m telling you.”
“I’m supposed to believe a man who’s ready to suppress evidence...”
“It isn’t evidence yet. It’s evidence only when it’s admitted as evidence. Right now, it’s just a man and a woman talking on tape.”
Andrew was listening.
“To introduce this tape,” he said, “I’ve got to call Sarah. I can’t try this case without her testimony. The minute I reveal the existence of the tape, I have to...”
“There are other tapes.”
“No one knows who she is on those tapes.”
“You do.”
You ever do this to your husband?
Yes, all the time.
You don’t.
I do. Every night of the week.
You’re lying.
I’m lying.
Jesus, what you do to me!
“No one will ask me who she is.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because her identity is a nonissue. On those tapes, she’s merely a subject. We don’t have to know who she is. Those tapes can be introduced through the detectives who conducted the surveillance.”
“But you, personally, know who she is.”
“That’s irrelevant,” Michael said.
Whose cock is this?
Yours.
Mine, yes. And I’m going to suck it till you scream.
Sarah...
I want to see you explode! Give it to me!
Oh God, Sarah!
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes!
“She said you’ve also got her on videotape.”
“She’s unrecognizable.”
“What you’re saying...”
“What I’m saying is I’ll only have to call her if I introduce the Connecticut tape. She went in wired for it, that makes her an informant. But I won’t have to introduce anything if there’s no trial. You plead to the two counts...”
“What’s in this for you? If you can put us all away, why are you willing to settle for me alone?”
“I don’t want to hurt my daughter. If I call Sarah, the whole thing comes out.”
“It’s a little late to be thinking about that, isn’t it?”
“It’s a little late for all of us,” Michael said softly.
The room went suddenly still.
“I’m willing to give up the better case just so Mollie... just so my daughter doesn’t get hurt,” Michael said.
“There’s another reason, though, isn’t there?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“There’s nothing else. You plead to the two counts, I make a small presentation, we get our indictment, and you accept the agreed twenty-five to life. Nobody will know this tape ever existed. Not my daughter, not your paisans. What do you say?”
“I’ll plead to just the one count. And I do the time in a federal prison.”
“No. You go to Attica.”
“Then we don’t have a deal.”
“You want me to use Sarah, is that it?”
“You’ve already used her.”
The room went silent again.
“I’ll plead to one count,” Andrew said, “or you take it to trial. Once the jury hears you turned your own wife into a whore, I may even walk.”
“It was my understanding that you loved her,” Michael said.
Andrew said nothing.
“I didn’t think you’d want this to happen to her,” he said.
Andrew still said nothing.’
“Well,” Michael said, “think about it,” and rose ponderously, and walked to the door.
Andrew sat alone in the living room, listening to the sound of the car starting outside, listening to it disappear on the night.
He could not fall asleep.
He lay upstairs in the big bed in the master bedroom of the house, going over every word of the conversation he’d had with Sarah’s husband, debating over and over again the only viable course of action that seemed open to him.
He would have her killed, of course.
First because she’d betrayed him yet another time...
But she had done it for her daughter.
Fuck her daughter, he thought angrily. She double-crossed me, she came in wearing a wire, this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, this was something that required planning, this was something she did to me personally! Told her husband we wouldn’t be going to the bugged apartment this Wednesday, we’d be going out instead to a delightful little restaurant someplace. Oh, really, darling? Well, no problem. Here’s a tape recorder to stuff up your kazoo.
Have her killed, of course.
Call Sal the Barber.
Sallie, baby, remember what happened to that runner in Washington Heights, the one who stiffed you with a stolen black ring? Well, I have something similar that needs taking care of.