“Even though you don’t care about the communities.”
“Talk me into caring,” Shane said with a grin.
Michelle stood. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
The restrooms were upstairs. A good excuse to step outside the speakeasy and make a call.
It was chilly in the fog. A homeless man pissed against the wall just to the left of the bar’s hidden entrance. The Tenderloin was a dicey neighborhood surrounded by gentrification, million-dollar lofts popping up here and there on its blocks like mushrooms after a rain.
Michelle buttoned her jacket and called Gary. She hoped he wouldn’t answer.
“Hello?”
Shit.
“I don’t have time to talk right now,” she said. “But you might be hearing some things about the fundraiser tonight. Caitlin said she’s on the fence about continuing to fund the Protect our Communities campaign.”
“You mean No on 275 and 391?”
“Right.”
“Tell me exactly what happened. This couldn’t just have come out of the blue.”
“I told you, I have to go. I’m with Caitlin. Let’s talk tomorrow.”
“Wait-”
“No. You don’t want me to blow this, do you? I’m hanging up now.”
“Okay, okay. Tomorrow. First thing.”
“I’ll call.”
Then she disconnected.
When she got back downstairs, Troy was standing at the bar, peering at the shelves of liquor. “Oh, good,” he said. “Thought I’d get the next round. Wanted to see what kind of whiskey they had. What would you like?”
“Oh. Just a glass of wine.”
“You have a preference?”
“The Napa cabernet. Thanks.”
They stood in silence as the bartender, a twentysomething with a beard, tattoos, wearing a striped vest and suspenders, mixed what looked to be a complicated cocktail.
“You know,” Troy said, “I get the feeling you maybe think I’m bad news for your boss.”
Michelle’s stomach lurched. This night wasn’t going to get any easier. What should she say to him?
“I… I don’t think that at all.”
She risked a glance over at the table where Shane and Caitlin sat, Caitlin in full charm mode, leaning forward slightly, a bright smile on her lips.
“You just… you need to be careful,” she said in a low voice. “Both of you. Some of the people involved with Safer America…”
Christ.
“They’re not great people.”
Troy rested his elbow on the bar and leaned back, looking at her with a puzzled, appraising expression. “What do you mean, exactly?”
The bartender turned in their direction. “Hi, folks. What can I get for you?”
Michelle shook her head. “That’s all I can say.”
And she probably shouldn’t have said it.
Shane offered to drop Troy at his hotel-“It’s on my way.”
When the town car pulled up to the corner in front of the speakeasy, Caitlin and Troy hugged briefly. A friendly, collegial hug, Michelle thought. Maybe that was all there was to it.
“Talk tomorrow?” Caitlin asked him in a low voice.
“Definitely.”
He glanced over at Michelle. Their eyes met briefly.
Just be careful.
Caitlin stretched in her seat in the back of the town car.
“What a night,” she said.
Caitlin had been quiet on the ride back. Michelle was guessing that she had a lot to think about. She’d just more or less blown up Safer America’s mission in California, and there was no way that wouldn’t have larger consequences.
Just not necessarily the ones Caitlin was expecting.
Caitlin sighed. “I am gonna catch so much shit when we get back to Houston.”
“You’ll be fine,” Michelle said automatically. “I mean, it’s your organization. They have to go along with what you want, don’t they?”
“Not necessarily. The board has the power to fire me, if they want to. But that could get pretty ugly too, if I want to make it ugly.” Caitlin chuckled. “Who knows, maybe I do.”
Michelle nodded. Things were building up to something very ugly, she was sure of it, but how could she talk Caitlin out of the confrontation? She had no leverage, no argument, other than a truth that sounded too crazy to believe.
x x x
“Let’s just meet for lunch tomorrow,” Caitlin said, as they waited for the elevator in the hotel lobby. “I’m worn out. In a good way.” She smiled. There was something thoughtful about the expression. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is, to finally just… cast off this weight I’ve been carrying. Stop being this symbol all the time. Whatever happens when we get home… it’s worth it.”
It’s not worth it if they kill you, Michelle almost blurted out.
You don’t know if that’s what they’re planning, she told herself.
She smiled and nodded and said: “That’s so great to hear.”
But later, lying in bed, unable to sleep, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
If Caitlin really did intend to pull Safer America’s resources out of the California campaign, or worse, put them on the other side of the propositions… Kicking her out of her own nonprofit might not be enough. Those kinds of battles often went public, and in Caitlin’s current frame of mind, Michelle could see her relishing that fight.
Killing Caitlin made a sick kind of sense, the kind of sense Gary made.
And don’t make it look like an accident, she thought. No. Make it a murder. Make it vicious. Senseless.
Caitlin O’Connor, tragic survivor, victimized a second time. A martyr.
A very useful symbol.
Think of the campaign ads and appeals for donations you could run with that.
It was too easy, putting herself in Gary’s head.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The advantage to calling Gary last night was that she’d done her job, technically. Now she could control the timing of when she called him again. She couldn’t put him off for too long, she knew, but she could keep both her iPhones switched off until she was ready for the conversation. She needed to think about what to say, a way to word it that would be less damaging to Caitlin, if that was even possible.
Besides, she had things she needed to do first.
Lotus had a tiny business center, for those who needed to print or fax and for the very few people who traveled without laptops or tablets or smartphones. The center was in an alcove, not even a separate room, to the side and behind the Buddha fountain.
6 a.m. The lobby was fairly quiet. A few guests sipped coffee and read newspapers in the couches and chairs adjacent to the bar.
“Just enter your name and room number on the screen,” the desk clerk said, “and we’ll charge it to your room.”
“Actually, is there some way I can pay cash instead? My employer’s covering my room, and this is my own business.”
“Sure, not a problem. Type in ‘Guest’ and ‘Guestroom1234’ and tell me when you’re done.”
She’d given it a lot of thought. She couldn’t trust that sending a flash drive to her old LA attorney would be enough. Maybe they’d find out what she was doing here, but that might not be an entirely bad thing either-it might distract them from looking into an obscure figure from her past. Or, it might make them think that she could have stashed this information in so many places that they’d never find them all.
Or, the whole thing was an exercise in futility.
But she had to take the chance, as bad as the odds were. Just going along with Gary and Sam and hoping that things would somehow work out gave her no chance at all.
Evergreen did email newsletters for subscribers, advertising seasonal menus, special events and deals, using a free web-based service. There weren’t all that many subscribers, under two hundred last time she checked, but it was easy to add other addresses to the email list. She did that now, going to websites like the New York Times and the Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Nation, the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reason, a few alternative online publications and local weeklies, finding a reporter’s or editor’s email address and adding it to the Evergreen mailing list.