Crully took some time. Gianis had a point.
“This whole suit is becoming a train wreck,” Gianis said. “You told me I had to sue, just to make a statement, and that the lawyers would tie everything up until the election.”
“Yeah, and you told me there was nothing to worry about. Now Kronon’s got you lying to the cops. And your sad-sack ex-girlfriend, who has the fact you ruined her life just about tattooed on her forehead, is saying you told her your brother was innocent. Don’t fuckin blame this on me. The ex, hell hath no fury, OK. But the cops?”
“I forgot about it.”
“Well, that was unfortunate,” Crully said.
“I didn’t lie to the cops anyway. Not that it makes any difference.”
Crully hadn’t talked with Paul about any of this in detail, and he wasn’t sure he cared to now. Even when shit came bubbling out of the earth like a clogged septic field, he never went back to the candidate to ask about the hot little thing on the side or the no-bid deal for a big contributor. Because he wanted to be able to tell reporters with a straight face that there was no truth to the charges, so far as he knew.
“You didn’t lie to the cops?” asked Crully. “How is that? You told the cops that you and your brother were out drinking beers over the river when it happened. And your brother pled guilty to the murder, so unless Cass had a chat with Einstein and conquered the laws of space and time, he wasn’t with you when the woman was killed. Right?”
Gianis assumed that agonized look Crully hated and gazed through the window again, shaking his head unconsciously at the magnitude of the complications.
“I never told the police we were together all night. They must have misunderstood me. I said that after the picnic we went out to the Overlook and had a few beers.”
“Do we want to go with that? A misunderstanding? Will Cass back that up?” They had said nothing in response to Kronon’s commercials, citing the ongoing litigation. Ray had filed a good motion with Judge Lands, asking him to set ground rules: Could the parties talk or not? It was a complicated issue, apparently, because Paul was a lawyer and legal ethics prohibited attorneys from making statements outside of court about a case while a lawsuit was pending. Judge Lands had scheduled a hearing for next week.
“Of course Cass would back it up.”
“And your brother didn’t tell you he’d killed the Kronon girl by the time you spoke to the police, right? So you didn’t recognize the significance of the timing.”
“He’s never told me that, frankly.”
“He didn’t tell you he was going to plead guilty?”
“Of course he did.”
Crully felt himself squint. “Are you splitting hairs?”
“You could say that, I suppose.”
Gianis was hiding something. That was the real problem. You could bad-mouth the press, and the campaign finance laws, and say politics was all flimflam, and be right 90 percent of the time, but hard truths, big truths about candidates, often emerged in campaigns. It was like performing brain surgery with a jackhammer. But it was getting clearer every day that there was something Gianis wasn’t telling.
“Look,” said Crully. “Is there anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Come on, Paul. Who the fuck am I, Carnac? I don’t want to have to figure out the right question. You know what would sink the ship. Is this ship sinking?”
“No.” Gianis slowly turned back to face Mark. Paul had those mystical black Greek eyes, so dark you couldn’t really see into them. “You want to hear me say it?”
Crully didn’t know for a second. “Yes,” he said finally.
“I didn’t murder Dita Kronon. I didn’t have a goddamned thing to do with it.”
A good politician was always a decent actor, so Crully had learned to take everything with a grain of salt. He knew a guy whom Clinton had dragged into a quiet corner in the White House so POTUS could assure him, strictly between them, that he’d never even coveted Monica Lewinsky. But Crully couldn’t help himself: He believed Paul and felt relief wash through his entire upper body.
“My brother thinks we should dismiss this lawsuit,” Gianis said.
“Fuck,” Crully said. “You can’t dismiss the lawsuit. It’ll be a disaster. It will look like you’re guilty.”
“I’m not saying I agree with him, Mark. But I take his point. It’s just a tar baby, this thing. Unless we agree to that test and hit the bull’s-eye. But it’s 199 out of two hundred we don’t. It’ll all get murkier. You’ll forgive me, but I should never have listened to you guys.”
“OK. Blame me. You want to, go ahead. But you can’t dismiss now. You dismiss and I have to quit.”
Gianis tilted his chin down so he could give Mark a hard look. “Threat?” he asked.
“Call it what you want. We have to play this out in court and hope for the best. Maybe Lands imposes a gag order and makes Hal take his ads off the air.”
“He won’t. I wouldn’t if I were the judge. You can’t let a politician file a lawsuit and silence his critics. And Du Bois Lands is a good lawyer. I used to work with him.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Crully. His heart perked up. “Why didn’t somebody tell me that?”
“Because it’s a long story,” Paul said. They were at the Metro Club and Paul opened the door, but before he slid across the seat, he patted Crully on the shoulder and smiled for the first time on the trip. A real smile. “Buck up, Mark. It’s actually a great day.”
“It is?”
“My brother gets out of prison.” He looked at his watch. “In fact, he’s out.”
At 8:30, the correctional officers would have fingerprinted him in the administrative center, to be sure they were releasing the right guy, and let him put on the old blue jeans and the sweatshirt in which he’d surrendered. Hillcrest looked like a ranch in a cowboy movie, surrounded by a low white fence. Not even barbed wire. They called it the Honor Camp, meaning there wasn’t anyone in there who hadn’t figured out he’d do really hard time if he was caught after running off. This morning the guards would have shot the bolts on B gate, which was opened solely to release prisoners and receive deliveries from sixteen-wheelers, and swung the two sides wide. And his brother would have walked out on the frozen dirt road alone. Sofia had left before six to drive him back.
Kim and Marty, the interns, were already under the Metro Club’s green awning. The constant pedestrian rush had ground the ice and snow of a few weeks ago into a charcoal mush that had limed over in a few stubborn clumps that still clung to the cement with the tenacity of a living creature. How much salt could the walks stand, he wondered, before they pitted and would need replacement? He’d never wondered about that in his life, but it would be a preoccupation if he became mayor. Every screw and nut in the structure of the Tri-Cities would be his concern.
His cell vibrated just as he reached the two aides. It was his personal handheld, not the mobile from the campaign. He thought it might be Beata, who’d called once already, but he hadn’t found the kind of complete privacy even a whispered conversation with Beata required. The number was blocked.
“Paul Gianis,” he said.
“Says who?” his brother replied. The two of them both laughed like seventh graders, laid out by some idiotic joke. His brother was on Sofia’s cell, on which the number was always withheld so she could talk to patients on her own schedule. The twins hadn’t had a phone conversation in God knew how long, probably close to twenty years, when their dad died. The lines inside the facility were all recorded and they therefore preferred to talk face-to-face.
“All OK?”
“A-OK.”
“So,” he said, “we’re free.”
“We’re free,” his brother answered.