“Yeah,” said Joel. “Now what about the rest of your end?”
“Ninety minutes. Your house.” He hung up before Joel could say no.
Joel punched in a second phone number. When Lena answered her cell, he asked: “Where are you?”
“Your place. Where else.”
“Get out of there. The bulldog is on his way.”
Knock, on Joel’s office door, and Dick came in: “Our boss signed on the line.”
“I’ll walk you two over.” Joel put the signed letter and copies in his suit pocket.
Dick’s frown said he thought that was peculiar, but hey: they were on the move.
Joel made sure they entered the right hearing room, then hurried outside.
An ocean of gray clouds rolled over the Capitol dome. Wind flapped Joel’s suit jacket as he walked past Hill cops, past tourists who were realizing that visiting this site was like hiking to a kabuki play but not understanding Japanese. An orange public school bus crammed with inner-city D.C. kids passed him on the way to their classroom that had a hole in its ceiling the size of a coffin.
He found Lena in his living room.
“I won’t let you do this alone,” she said. “Why is he coming here?”
“To show me he knows where I live.”
“Can we get away?”
“Sure,” he said. “Anywhere you want to go.”
“Here,” she said, nuzzling his chest. “I want to go right here.”
“After this, it can be just us.”
He felt her nod. “I can be somebody else. I can dye my hair.”
The doorbell rang.
Rain drops spit at Joel when he let the bulldog in his house.
The lobbyist stared at them. “You two make a helluva pair.”
“Don’t you talk about us.” Lena hugged her arms across her chest.
Frank Greene shrugged. “What do you got for me?”
Joel handed him a photocopy. As the bulldog studied that piece of paper, Joel heard the clatter of wind and rain storming against his living room windows.
“Our turn,” said Lena.
“About that.” The bulldog tossed a thick envelope to Lena. “Tough luck.”
“What do you mean?” said Joel.
“Changing circumstances require compromises. Means that your appropriation is cut fifty percent to fifty thou.”
“You can’t screw us,” said Lena.
“Fifty K is way more than you’ve been paid for screwing before.” The lobbyist turned to the Senate aide. Shrugged in a fashion that an amateur might mistake for an apology. “This town. What can you do?”
“I didn’t sign on for this,” said Joel.
“You signed up for everything the moment you let her in your car.”
“Stop it!” screamed Lena.
The bulldog thrust his finger at her. “You don’t give orders.”
Joel pushed the lobbyist’s arm away from Lena.
“What are you going to do?” growled the bulldog. “You got what I gave you.”
Joel replied: “And all you’ve got for sure is a piece of paper.”
“Oh, you think so?” The bulldog snapped at Lena. “You think so, too?”
“Shut up!” She shook the envelope in Greene’s face. “You think I did it for this?”
Lena threw the envelope away. It landed on the couch by her bulky cloth purse.
“Why you did whatever is your problem.”
Joel said: “Leave her alone.”
“Oh, come on.” said the bulldog. “Don’t you get it?”
Joel said: “I get that we’ve only gotten half of what was promised.”
“You sure you want the rest?”
“Shut up!” Lena lunged toward the couch, her purse, the money envelope. “You can’t fuck us like this!”
“Babe, getting fucked is your whole life.”
“Not now!” Lena cradled the envelope and her clunky purse. “Not for us.”
Whoa, stop the way the world’s been working, ’cause suddenly you decided you got yourself an us? Let’s see.”
“No. Don’t!”
Like a mad dog, the lobbyist whirled to Joel. “You want it all?”
“Shut up.” said Lena. “Stop!”
The bulldog surged toward her Joel, growled: “You want what you really got?”
Out of her purse jerked Lena’s hand holding a snub-nosed revolver Bam
Window panes flashed and vibrated with the gunshot.
From outside, it seemed only like the storm.
Joel knew he must have heard the bang, seen the gunshot flash, but he felt like he had fallen back into himself after being far away. Now, suddenly, he was right here, in his living room, Lena holding a pistol, Frank Greene clutching his left side.
“You bitch!” yelled Frank. “Gonna kill you.”
Frank staggered toward her.
Bam! Bam!
Frank crumpled to the maroon rug. Window panes rattled.
Lena whispered: “It shot him.”
Joel crouched to touch the lobbyist’s motionless neck. Then Joel’s hand shook and wouldn’t stop. His whole body trembled.
Lena pulled him up to her embrace. “I’ll call the police,” she said. “Tell them the truth.”
“What good would that do?”
“Even you can’t fix this.”
“But it can be managed.”
“Joel, no. What he did, said, what he was going to—”
“What matters is what happens right now,” Joel told her.
He filled her eyes as she told him: “I never thought it would go this way. I love you.”
“Yeah. But now that’s not enough.”
He pocketed the gun. Had her help him roll the dead man up in the maroon rug.
Joel put on a hooded raincoat. Ran outside in the storm. Drove his car into the alley, parked by his trash cans. Lena let him in the back door. Helped him shoulder the rolled-up maroon rug, stagger through the rain, cram it into his car’s trunk.
Inside his house, water dripped off them to tap on the bare wood floor.
“Take the money.” He stuffed the envelope in her cloth purse. “Go home. You weren’t here. Barely know me. I’ll call when it’s safe.”
He drove her to nearby Union Station. Stopped where the few people running past them had eyes only for their own escape from the storm.
“Go,” he told her crying eyes. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”
She hugged him so tight he almost died. Ran from his car toward the subway escalator. Turned to look back at him through gray sheets of driving rain. He memorized her standing there washed by all the tears in town.
The escalator fed her to the underground.
Go he told himself. No speeding tickets. No accidents. Off the Hilclass="underline" Virginia? Maryland? A country road. A quarry filled by a dead lake. A ditch with rocks that could be rolled. Wipe the gun. Throw the wallet, cell phones — cell phones: what is it about — never mind Ditch evidence everywhere but on the Hill.
Ring! His cell phone, not the disposable he’d need to dump.
Can’t not
Dick’s voice in his ear: “Joel, where the hell are you?”
Sell the truth when you can: “In my car. On the Hill. Got places to go.”
“Yeah,” said Dick, “like here to the boss’ house, pron-to.”
“Why?”
“Because of the rain, man. It’s like a hurricane.”
“But—”
“No buts, or our butts are in a sling. We got here just as it started spitting. Finding the white sack took awhile. Now we gotta get back to the Capitol in time for the interview in the TV press gallery. Looking rough for a good TV Q is cool, but looking like a drowned rat blows, so you need to swing by here and give us a ride.”