“How’s your campaign?” she asked.
“Everybody says it’s going great,” he said, again offering that expansive smile. He was a nice-looking man, fit, a tad better than six feet, with a mountain of black hair that gleamed like a crow, save the scattered strands gone to silver. His long face had been weighted by time in that way that somehow looked good only on men, who ended up appearing wiser, nobler and ergo more fit for power. On women, it was just age. “Can I count on your vote?”
She probably would have said yes, even if it hadn’t been banter, but Paul was interrupted by the arrival of Cass’s main lawyer, Sandy Stern, who, according to the prison file, had represented Cass when he pled guilty. Round and bald, with an enigmatically elegant manner, Stern demonstrated there was an advantage to looking middle-aged when you were younger. He seemed barely changed by the fifteen years that had passed since he’d first cross-examined Evon in one of the Project Petros cases. Stern greeted Paul and also shook hands with Evon with a tiny bow, although she was unsure he actually remembered her.
A skinny female clerk appeared then from the back room to announce the commissioners were ready, and Evon summoned Tooley and Hal from the hall. By the time they returned to the conference room, a deputy sheriff was steering Cass Gianis in from a side door. He moved with mincing steps, since he wore leg irons and manacles, both connected to a metal chain that circled the waist of his blue jumpsuit. Paul asked the deputy’s permission before embracing his brother.
Although the Gianises were obviously identical twins, seeing them side by side Evon recognized that, like her friends the Sherrell sisters back in Kaskia, they had not matured as exact photocopies. Cass was a tad taller, and somewhat broader. The most notable difference was that Paul’s nose had been broken years ago. There was a funny story about that, retold in every profile of Paul, because, during their honeymoon in 1983, his wife, Sofia, had accidentally hit him with a tennis racket when he was trying to teach her the game. His father had supposedly taken one look at the bandage when they returned and said, ‘I thought I told you not to talk back.’ Paul had been left with a purplish lump at the bridge that looked a bit like a knuckle. Both brothers wore glasses, Cass’s simple clear plastic prison-issue frames, Paul’s black and stylishly squared. By some accounts, Paul had given up his contacts to obscure his broken nose, but to Evon it made the contrast in their profiles more noticeable. The resemblance between the twins was strong otherwise, except that Cass parted his thick hair, grown out as a privilege of minimum security, on the left, while Paul combed his hair the other way.
The five members of the commission filed in from a back door, four men and one woman, a diverse racial array like a UN poster. Evon had no idea who any of them were. No doubt they were all friends of the governor, a Republican, and thus, if anything, likely to be inclined toward Hal, who, largely by himself, financed the operations of the Republican Party in Kindle County.
The chairman, a sorrowful-looking fellow named Perfectus Elder, went through a discussion of several cases that received nothing but perfunctory commentary from the assistant attorney general, a lean guy named Logan whom Hal and Tooley had been talking with when Evon arrived. While this was occurring, an elderly lady in a wheelchair was steered into the hearing room by her tiny Filipina caregiver. The woman was engaged in an addled murmur, and the caregiver remonstrated with her quietly, as if speaking to a young child. The old woman’s white hair was disordered and thin, like the remains of a milkweed pod, but she was beautifully dressed, and, even reduced by age and disease, retained a look of some determination. Paul turned away from his brother to greet her and she fell upon him with sufficient desperation that Evon realized the old lady was their mother.
“Typical stunt,” Hal muttered immediately, loud enough that the commissioners had to hear the remark. Under the table, Tooley grabbed Hal’s hand. Evon had been around enough hearing rooms to share Hal’s suspicion. Stern and Paul, an accomplished trial lawyer who’d made a bundle in the national tobacco litigation after he left the PA’s office, were using the twins’ mother as an exhibit, demonstrating that there was no time to lose in letting Cass out. In the meantime, Paul again awaited the deputy’s agreement before nodding to Cass, who turned back to embrace their mom. She became a burbling mess, her wailing briefly filling the hearing room. Evon realized it might have been years since the old lady had last seen her sons together. Chairman Elder grimaced a bit, then called the case everyone here was clearly waiting for.
“Matter of Cassian Gianis, number 54669, objection of Herakles Kronon.” Elder made a complete hash of Hal’s names, not just the first, which was often mispronounced, but the last as well, which was spoken as if he were an Irishman named Cronin.
Mel on one side, and Stern and Paul on the other, met at the lectern and gave their names for the record, which was a tape recording being made by the slender young woman who was operating the machine at the end of the table. Several reporters had filed in in the last few minutes, taking the seats next to Evon in the first row of chairs, joining Paul’s two staffers. Word that Paul Gianis was in the house seemed to have attracted several additional onlookers, who filled the second and third rows.
“Mr. Gianis is scheduled for release on January thirtieth,” said Elder, “and Mr. Kronon has objected. Mr. Tooley, how should we proceed?”
“My client would like to address the commission,” said Mel, and moved aside to let Hal take his place. Tooley was giving the wild horse its head, but doing his best not to be splattered by the mud as he galloped by. Everyone in the room, except Hal, accepted the inevitability of Paul Gianis’s election.
Hal came to his feet, looking awkward, as Evon could have predicted. He had forgotten to re-button his shirt collar and his tie was to the side, and he couldn’t figure out where to put his hands, which he finally folded in front of himself. Her boss, even at his best, was not a pleasing physical presence. He had a large sloping belly and an oddly lizard-like face with goggle eyes, heavy jowls, thick horn-rimmed glasses and a flattened nose. His hairline had been reduced to a few flyaway scraps.
He expressed his thanks to the board members and then began a free-form soliloquy about Dita’s death. Although Hal generally avoided the unruly emotions summoned by speaking about his sister’s murder, she was never far from his mind. In Hal’s office, on one wall, was a small shrine to Dita, including her senior sorority picture from the Kappa Kappa Gamma house at State. She had been striking and dark, with huge eyes and a wide wry smile.
By the time Hal was a couple of minutes into his remarks, he was weeping, but he was also largely incoherent. Only one thing was clear in his presentation. Because Hal’s pain remained, it seemed wrong that Cass Gianis would be allowed to walk free.
As Hal spoke, occasional loony mumblings came from the twins’ mother on the other side of the room, her caregiver making persistent efforts to shush her. At the other table, Paul and Cass remained respectfully stone-faced throughout Hal’s presentation.
When Hal finally sat down again, Stern rose, taking care to first close the center button on his suit coat. He still retained the faint accent of his native Argentina.
“No one wishes more than Cass, and his mother and brother here beside him, that the events of that night twenty-five years ago could be undone. It has been a source of terrible grief to their family, and they understand that their own loss has been small next to the Kronons’. But Cass has paid the price fixed by the law, a sentence that was agreed to with the consent of the Kronons at the time. The record-”