“In any event, a month or so after the adoption, the new parents were in a fatal automobile accident on the Pacific Coast Highway. The car went off a cliff into the ocean and was swept away. The wife’s parents were called and informed their daughter and her husband were dead. They rushed to California and took the baby home to Maryland.”
During Grafton’s explanation I had been keeping an eye on Dorsey while I worked on the cognac, which was damned good. She was having difficulty looking at anything except the red folder under the admiral’s arm. She was pale, licking her lips and swallowing repeatedly. I thought she might be on the verge of throwing up.
“Of course, Rollo wasn’t really dead. His wife was — he killed her.”
A gasp came from Dorsey. She got off the arm of her chair, walked over to Royston, and confronted him from a distance of six inches. “Say it isn’t so.”
“I have no idea why he’s telling us this tale,” Dell Royston said, and put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Nor if there is a word of truth in it.”
She pushed his hand off, glanced back at Grafton. “Go on,” she ordered.
“Rollo had made preparations. He had already equipped himself with a false name and legend, complete with a birth certificate, driver’s license, and all the other sheets of paper that memorialize our past. He cut off the fashionable mop of hair, shaved, went back east and ditched the hippie clothes, gained a fast thirty pounds, and entered law school.
“The risk was that someone would recognize him as Michael O’Shea. It was not a very large risk — he had switched coasts, lifestyles, and social circles, and significantly altered his appearance. If anyone noticed the resemblance, they were probably aware that Michael O’Shea was dead and dismissed the fading resemblance as a coincidence. And so the years rolled by, everyone aged, and Michael O’Shea slipped further and further into the past in a world that rapidly changed. The risk of someone realizing he was O’Shea dropped toward zero. Only the KGB was interested in O’Shea, and it had lost him.
“In fact, O’Shea and his girlfriend had done such a good job of faking his death in the car wreck, the Soviets thought he was dead. The file on Rollo at KGB headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow was closed.” Jake gestured with the red file, then patted it against his leg.
“Michael O’Shea and his girlfriend believed they had pulled it off. Their ambition brought them together again. They resumed their journey toward that high, windswept place they had glimpsed when they were young. And they had the presidency in sight when Mikhail Goncharov defected with his treasure-trove of notes from the KGB archives. The worm of suspicion began to gnaw relentlessly on them. What if the KGB knew? What if evidence of treason and murder was contained in those files?” The file was in the admiral’s right hand; every eye in the room went to it.
“O’Shea and his lover decided they couldn’t live with the risk,” he said softly. “The notes must be destroyed. Anyone who had read them must die.”
Royston made a rude noise. “I have never heard such a vile slander in all of American politics!” he said belligerently. “You haven’t a shred of proof of any of these accusations.”
You’ve got to give him credit — he was trying. His face glistened with perspiration.
“Not a shred of proof,” he continued hoarsely. “Even if it’s true, it has nothing to do with us. Now get the hell out of here, and if I hear a whisper about you being here tonight — from any of you people — the world is going to cave in on you.”
Dorsey continued to study Royston’s face. Sonnenberg put a hand on her arm to draw her away, and she brushed it off.
“I do have proof,” Jake Grafton said simply. “In the last few days we have done DNA testing. Michael O’Shea has living relatives. One of them is Jimmy O’Shea, a brother who lives in Brooklyn. With the help of his barber, we obtained samples of his hair. There is no doubt, Mr. Royston. You are Jimmy O’Shea’s brother and Dorsey O’Shea’s father. You, Ms. Sonnenberg, are Dorsey’s mother.”
Dorsey approached Zooey. “You never told me Dell was my father.”
Zooey couldn’t avoid those eyes.
“Your whole life has been a lie, Mom,” Dorsey continued, her voice cracking like old glass. “You helped him murder that woman! Everything you said, everything you did was a lie designed to get you elected to the presidency.”
“Dorsey, I—”
“Don’t touch me!” She backed up slowly, a step at a time. “All these years I thought my father was dead. You told me he was dead. But you never told me he murdered his wife and you helped him do it!”
She wheeled and slapped Dell Royston with a sound that cracked like a pistol shot.
“Royston,” said Myron Emerick, “you’re under arrest.”
“What’s the charge?”
“First degree murder of Kelly Erlanger. One of the admiral’s friends was listening to her cell phone conversations. That will do for starters, but I think by arraignment time we’ll have a couple dozen murders to charge you with. We picked up your executive assistant earlier this evening — he hasn’t stopped talking. Then two men broke into the admiral’s house tonight. They are now under arrest and are also telling everything they know.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather when Royston said, “Do you have a warrant?” I didn’t think he had any juice left at that point, but apparently he was tougher than I thought.
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Emerick removed a document from a coat pocket and passed it to Royston. He glanced at Sonnenberg. “I have one for you, too, Ms. Sonnenberg, charging you as an accessory.”
Zooey turned on Royston. “You could take care of it, you said. The presidency of the United States was—.” She held out both hands and closed them into fists. “You!” I had never in my life heard such venom in just one word.
She turned and stalked into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
I was hanging on to the bar by this time. My trousers were sodden with blood, the room was spinning, the faces were going in and out of focus. I knew it was loss of blood, not the cognac — which was mighty tasty — so I had another gulp.
On the bar beside me was a phone. I saw one of the two lines illuminate. I waited a decent interval — like maybe thirty seconds while Dorsey sobbed and one of the agents installed a set of handcuffs on Royston — then I picked up the phone and punched that line.
Zooey was talking. “… Emerick arrested Dell and — who is listening on this line?”
Of course they could hear the commotion going on around me. “Uh, Tommy Carmellini, Ms. Sonnenberg. Eavesdropping’s a bad habit, I know. Hope you don’t mind.”
Apparently the president didn’t care who else was listening. Before she could tell me to hang up and go to hell, he said, “Zooey, the attorney general is here along with the chief of staff. They tell me that if you are alive when Emerick is ready to leave that suite you’re in, he intends to arrest you as an accessory to murder. He has a warrant in his pocket. Tomorrow morning I am announcing a new choice for vice president. You decide how you want the headlines to read.”
“Those are my only choices?”
“Those two.”
“You bastard! All these years holding your hand and smiling while you tomcatted around and made me a laughingstock! This is what I get for all those years of humiliation! Well, I’m not going silently in a box so you can weep at the funeral and march bravely on. Oh, no! I’m going to tell the press everything—everything!” Her voice rose to a shriek. “When I get through you won’t be able to win an election for constable in any county in the country.”
“Good-bye, Zooey,” he said tightly, and broke the connection.