“I been following the whole thing about the justice. What’s her name?”
A prickling came to Anne’s neck. “Hollander.”
“I could take care of that.”
Unthinkable. Absolutely unthinkable. Anne opened her mouth to tell him so. Then stopped. Unthinkable, yes, but in an incredibly exciting way.
“I can’t let you do it,” Anne said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Too risky. There’s all sorts of security. Especially now.”
“Hey,” Ambrosi said. “You don’t remember what Al Pacino said? Somebody told Al he couldn’t whack this guy. Al says if history teaches us anything, it’s that you can kill anybody. He’s right.”
“Look, we better get off now,” Anne said. “When can I see you?”
“After.”
“After what?”
“I’ll let you know.”
2
In the moonlight, the back acre of Bill Bonassi’s property looked like the realm of a ghost story. There were no colors, only differing shades of light and dark.
Millie and Bonassi sat on the verandah. Millie wondered if this would be the last time she did so as chief justice. Tomorrow, according to new reports, the House committee would release its report, and recommend that the members vote to impeach Millicent Mannings Hollander.
“This is only the beginning of the fight,” Bonassi said, trying as always to encourage her. Usually it worked.
Not tonight. Tonight she felt it all slipping away. As if, out in the shadows of the huge lawn, the forces of darkness were gathered to declare victory.
“But the fight is dirty!” Millie said. “They had someone taking pictures of me at the hospital! While my mother was dying some sleazy photographer was snapping away. And the alcohol story! Bill, is it un-Christian to want to claw their eyes out?”
“Righteous anger is allowable, I should think.”
“How can they do this to the Court?”
“They can because they want to scorch the earth. If the Court gets burned up, so be it. You’re a threat to them now. They’ll say anything, do anything.”
“I want to talk. I can’t stand this. Let’s call a press conference.”
“I’m preparing a statement,” Bonassi said calmly. “It will emphasize that an impeachment is nothing more than an indictment, and that anyone accused in this country is innocent until proven guilty. We seem to forget that sometimes.”
“But when do I get to speak?” Millie asked.
“Right now the dogs are barking. They won’t hear you.”
“But when?”
“We’ll know when.”
Millie let out a labored breath. Her chest was tight. “I wish I had your faith, Bill. I’m still not there.”
“Faith takes time. Instant faith is not very hearty. The Bible says it’s the testing of your faith that develops perseverance.”
“Why?” Millie said. “Why is this happening?”
Bonassi laced his fingers together. “That question is most often answered after the fact. You look back, and you see what God’s pattern was.”
The word plucked an inner chord in Millie. “My friend, the minister in California, said something like that. God weaving a pattern for the good of those who love him.”
“Ah, yes,” Bonassi said. “Romans 8:28. The reverse paranoid text.”
“Excuse me?”
Bill Bonassi’s smile was moonlit. “The Scriptures make an incredible claim that, for those who follow Christ, God arranges things so that your good is the final outcome. He is out to get you, you see, but out of love. You are a reverse paranoid if you believe this.”
Millie shook her head slightly. “Seems almost too good to be true.”
“That’s a pretty good definition of God, isn’t it?”
“The polls, I’m told, have been running 3-1 against me. And the newspapers and TV news – ”
“Forget ’em!” Bonassi said. “We have truth on our side.”
Millie flashed to the sign on Tom Riley’s desk. Vincit omnia veritas. And then, suddenly, she knew what would save the Court.
“Riley,” she blurted.
Bonassi looked at her.
“Riley is the key,” she said.
3
Don Markey had never interrogated a senator before. He’d questioned a few members of the House, but most of them were as witnesses or sources of information for crimes that did not involve them directly.
This was another level entirely. This time there was a strange link between the murder of Tad Levering, the senator, and Millicent Mannings Hollander.
If one accepted that this was a murder. Markey did without question, but in the interview room, with Levering’s lawyer present, that was not a done deal.
“His son was mentally disturbed,” the lawyer, a three-piece job named Sugden Bales, said. “That was obvious. And mentally disturbed people kill themselves.”
“By tying cinder blocks to their own feet?” Markey asked.
“Why not? Can you think of a better way to drown?”
“I want to know if the senator thinks that,” Markey insisted, looking at Levering. The senator was, Markey thought, the proverbial shell of a man. His whole appearance had changed. Where he had once been almost comically belligerent, he was now folding in upon himself, as if his very bones, like fallen tent stakes, had been ripped out of him.
“The senator is not going to say anything to you,” Bales said. “I am advising him not to say a word. You want to arrest him? Be my guest. You’ll look like an attention-grabbing fool, but that’s your call.”
Bales was right, Markey knew. There was not enough evidence to hold Sam Levering. Markey had watched Levering closely when he IDed his son’s body. The grief in his face couldn’t have been faked, not even by a Slick Sam.
But did he know about the killing at all? If he did, he wasn’t talking.
“Look,” Markey said to Bales. “We know the dance. We can turn off the music and move ahead to where we’ll be in a few weeks anyway. Just have the senator answer a few questions, with you standing here, and we’ll be done with it.”
“No,” Bales said. “Absolutely not.”
“Why don’t you ask your client?”
“I don’t have to ask him, I know what he – ” Bales stopped when he turned to Levering.
The senator was shaking, his head buried in his chest. Then he broke out in great sobs, deep and groaning. When he looked up at the ceiling Markey could see his eyes were bloodshot. His cheeks were streaked with wet. “Oh, God!” Levering howled at the ceiling. “Taaaad!”
It would have taken an icy heart not to feel for the guy. Markey had seen criminals and con men, faced with overwhelming evidence, crack. Most didn’t, but some did. Usually that was sorrow over being caught. But Levering was hurting to the very depths.
Bales, looking as uncomfortable as a bishop in a bar, made a pitiful attempt to pat his client on the shoulder.
“Maybe,” Markey said, “we should take a short break.”
“Maybe we should just call the whole thing off,” Bales said. “And you can just – ”
“No,” Levering said.
The two other men looked at him.
“Wait,” Bales said.
“No, I want to talk.”
“My advice is – ”
“I don’t care about your advice,” Levering said, the familiar belligerence flooding back to his voice. “I want to talk.”
“Your lawyer has advised you not to,” Markey said, even as he readied the tape recorder.
“I said I don’t care.” Levering smoothed his hair back with his hands, then used the backs of his hands to wipe his eyes. His breathing was labored.
“Sam, please,” Bales said.
“Go have a smoke, Sug,” Levering said.
“I’ll stay.”
“Get out of here!”
Sugden Bales looked as if he had been smeared with something foul. He said nothing as he snagged his Givenci briefcase and walked out the door.
“You got that thing ready?” Levering said, nodding toward the recorder.