‘We staged it because we were behind. We staged it to get sympathy.’
‘Anybody who tried something like that would get nailed within a day or two.’
‘We can’t rule it out.’
‘God, are you serious?’ She seemed as shocked by my words as she had been when I’d told her about Showalter’s. ‘There’s no way anybody on our staff—’
‘It wouldn’t have to be on our staff. It could be somebody on our staff who hired somebody—’
‘You don’t really believe that? You don’t really agree with Showalter?’
‘I don’t agree with him and I’d sure as hell never admit to him something like that’s possible. Those shots were so wild—’
I saw the first hint of doubt in those blue eyes I’d come to know so well. I was seeing in her what I was afraid I’d be seeing in the press very soon. That first instance of doubt, the shots having missed by so much.
I went back through my story about the mysterious phone caller. I told her Showalter believed it might be a prank.
But I always drew back from the prank theory. There was enough complicated anguish in her voice to make her real. The terrified wife who wanted to help her husband without getting the police involved. Which made no sense, but that was exactly the point. The panicked spouse whose plan made no sense.
But why hadn’t she shown up last night? And why hadn’t she at least called later to explain why she hadn’t been able to make it?
‘I think she’s real, Dev. No matter what Showalter says.’
‘So do I.’
‘So that would eliminate both it being “staged” and anybody in our campaign being involved.’
‘Probably.’
Even her frowns were cute. ‘I just want a nice, simple, straightforward assassination attempt we can ride all the way to a twenty-eight-point win on election day.’
‘I take it you’d settle for a two-point win?’
‘I’d settle for a point-four win.’
‘I thought so.’
But our spurt of humor vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
‘I need to find the woman,’ I said.
‘And just how do you plan to do that?’
‘I know where to start, anyway. A place called the Skylight.’
‘This is our secret, this conversation.’
‘Of course.’
I was assuming that my GPS would take me to the Skylight tavern without any trouble. Last night the old man’s ‘GSP’ reference had been funny. Within half an hour from now it would be anything but.
Sixteen
I’d done some acting in college. A girl I’d been trying to get close to insisted I had ‘the look.’ I never did figure out what that meant exactly.
I didn’t like acting much — and I was miserable at it — but I did get interested in the plays of Eugene O’Neill. I thought of him as I walked inside the Skylight tavern. The night man had come on at four. It was now four-twenty.
This was O’Neill turf, the land of lost souls. Every face in the place hinted at a story that would either break your heart or scare the shit out of you or both. Old, young, working class or homeless-looking needed — at a minimum — dentists, barbers and social workers.
The exceptions were the ex-military ones. Survivors of our many recent wars. The buzz cuts gave them away as well as the injuries: the man who played poker one-handed. The man with the left cheek burned into shallow ruts. The man in the wheelchair. The man with the missing ear and the black eyepatch.
There was no jukebox, just a TV set mounted upon the wall. It was turned off.
The customers hadn’t shown much interest in me. The bartender, who was tall, bony and had a blue left eye that wandered, studied me as if I were an unknown species.
‘What’ll you have, mister?’
‘You have Pepsi?’
‘I’ll have to charge you a buck.’
‘That’s all right.’
He flipped up a lid below the bar. Both arms bore faded tattoos signifying that he’d been in the U.S. Navy. I guessed he’d served on a ship during Vietnam.
A radio turned low vibrated with the sounds of a baseball game. No wonder he hadn’t been interested when I’d walked in. This year the playoffs for the World Series were as exciting as any in the last decade.
He nodded his knobby bald head to the TV set above us. ‘I’d rather watch it but you know how much those bastards want to come out here and fix it? Hell, it ain’t more than ten years old or so.’
I thought of all the technological developments in the last ten years. If cavemen had had TV sets they would have been identical to the heavy box perched above us. But the kind of money he probably made in a place like this precluded him from most extra expenses. And this particular group of men seemed more interested in their conversations than anything else. I was sure that men in dungeons had talked a lot, too.
‘Not much sense in fixin’ it, anyway,’ he said. ‘City council’s all set to tear this place down. We’re one of the few places standin’.’
He was right about that. The Godzillas of urban renewal had leveled a few square miles of this area. Piles of rubble lay on blocks of empty dirt lots. Between medical facilities, parking lots and mini-malls, land was at a premium in Danton.
‘Most of the guys in here grew up in the neighborhood. They come back here ’cause their dads and their granddads came here.’
He’d turned out, surprisingly, to be a talker.
And then I saw him. I had to stare to make sure. He stopped and spoke to the men at one of the tables. He must have said something funny. For a man who was right on the verge of being dumped in an old folks’ home, he was a sprightly son of a bitch. Even a bit jaunty.
He took a stool at the end of the bar. A few more hellos to the regulars talking and paying half-assed attention to the game. His eyes had yet to travel down to where I sat.
I’d been about to ask the bartender all about a certain female customer of his delivered here by cab the night before last, but now a more interesting possibility had presented itself.
And he saw me. He was cooler about it than I would have expected. He even started talking to the Hispanic man seated next to him. He kept glancing up. Couldn’t resist. He knew that unless he did something, and fast, he would have to face me. And answer a lot of uncomfortable questions.
Then, he bolted. No warning.
He wasn’t as old and infirm as he’d pretended to be last night, but he wasn’t young and there was a stiffness — maybe soreness — in the legs he was pushing much faster than they wanted to be pushed.
I almost tripped across the threshold as I ran after him. The sunlight blinded me momentarily as I looked around for him.
He stood at the same newer Ford he’d been in last night. But his run must have tired him because as he stood trying to unlock his car his entire body heaved with the effort.
I clamped my hand on his bony shoulder and spun him around. In the daylight the face, for all its wrinkles, was livelier than it had been when he’d been pretending to be nearing dementia. Now the brown gaze was wilier. He glanced at his Ford. I’d already memorized the license number.
‘How’s your GSP doing?’
‘I don’t have to talk to you.’ His faded yellow sports shirt was soaked with sweat; his face gleamed.
‘You don’t have to, but you will. And right now.’
‘You don’t cut shit with me.’ But he was gasping as he said this.
‘I may not. But the police will.’
The jaws tensed. ‘I ain’t afraid of cops.’
‘Good for you. I am.’
He was looking past my shoulder. Even without turning around I knew that he was looking for a savior.