By the time Mrs. Sharmer had left his office at the end of that first meeting, Noah’s determination to dislike her had given way to admiration. She wore her beauty with humility, but more impressively, she kept her pedigree in her purse and never flashed it, as did so many others of her economic station.
At forty, she was only seven years older than Noah. Another Woman this beautiful would inspire his sexual interest — even an octogenarian kept youthful by a vile diet of monkey glands. By this third meeting, however, he regarded her as he might have regarded a sister: with the desire only to protect her and earn her approval.
She quieted the cynic in him, and he liked this inner hush, which lie hadn’t known for many years.
When she arrived at the open door of the presidential suite where Noah stood, she offered her hand; if younger and more foolish, he might have kissed it. Instead, they shook. Her grip was firm.
Her voice wasn’t full of money, no disdain or evidence of tutor-shaped enunciation, but rich with quiet self-possession and faraway music. “How are you this evening, Mr. Farrel?”
“Just wondering how I ever took pleasure in this line of work.”
“The cloak-and-dagger aspect ought to be fun, and the sleuthing. I’ve always loved the Rex Stout mysteries.”
“Yeah, but it never quite makes up for always being the bearer of had news.” He stepped back from the door to let her enter.
The presidential suite was hers, not because she had booked the use of it, but because she owned the hotel. She was directly engaged in all her business enterprises; if her husband were having her followed, this early-evening visit wouldn’t raise his suspicions.
“Is bad news what you always bring?” she asked as Noah closed the door and followed her into the suite.
“Often enough that it seems like always.”
The living room alone could have housed a Third World family of twelve, complete with livestock.
“Then why not do something else?” she asked.
“They’ll never let me be a cop again, but my mind doesn’t have a reset button. If I can’t be a cop, I’ll be a make-believe cop, like what I am now, and if someday I can’t do this… Well, then, .”
When he trailed off, she finished for him: “Then screw it.”
Noah smiled. This was one reason he liked her. Class and style without pretension. “Exactly.”
The suite featured contemporary decor. The honey-toned, bird’s-eye maple entertainment center, with ebony accents, was a modified obelisk, not gracefully tapered like a standard obelisk, but of chunky proportions. The open doors revealed a large TV screen.
Instead of seeking chairs, they remained standing for the show.
A single lamp glowed. Like a jury of ghosts, ranks of shadows gathered in the room.
Earlier Noah had loaded the tape in the VCR. Now he pushed PLAY on the remote control.
On screen: the residential street in Anaheim. The camera tilted down from a height, focusing on the house of the congressman’s lover.
“That’s a severe angle,” Mrs. Sharmer said. “Where were you?”
“I’m not shooting this. My associate is at an attic window of the place across the street. We made financial arrangements with the owner. It’s item number seven on your final bill.”
The camera pulled back and angled down even more severely to reveal Noah’s Chevrolet parked at the curb: battered but beloved steed, still ready to race when this had been shot, subsequently rendered into spare parts by a machine knacker.
“That’s my car,” he explained. “I’m behind the wheel.”
The camera tilted up, panned right: A silver Jaguar approached through the early twilight. The car stopped at the paramour’s house, a tall man got out of the passenger’s door, and the Jaguar drove away.
Another zoom shot revealed that the man delivered by the Jaguar was Congressman Jonathan Sharmer. His handsome profile was ideal for stone monuments in a heroic age, though by his actions he had proved that he possessed neither the heart nor the soul to match his face.
Arrogance issued from him as holy light might radiate from the apparition of a saint, and he stood facing the street, head raised as though he were admiring the palette of the twilight sky.
“Because he keeps tabs on you, he’s been on to me from the start, but he doesn’t know that I know that he knows. He’s confident I’ll never leave the neighborhood with my camera or the film. Playing with me. He isn’t aware of my associate in the attic.”
Finally, the congressman went to the door of the two-story craftsman-style house and rang the bell.
A maximum-zoom shot captured the young brunette who answered the bell. In skintight shorts and a tube top stretched so extravagantly that it might kill bystanders if it snapped, she was temptation packaged for easy access.
“Her name’s Karla Rhymes,” Noah reported. “When she worked as a dancer, she called herself Tiffany Tush.”
“Not a ballerina, I assume.”
“She performed at a club called Planet Pussycat.”
On the threshold, Karla and the politician embraced. Even in the fading light of dusk, and further obscured by the shade of the porch roof, their long kiss could not be mistaken for platonic affection.
“She’s on the payroll of your husband’s charitable foundation.”
“The Circle of Friends.”
More than friends, the couple on the TV were as close as Siamese twins, joined at the tongue.
“She gets eighty-six thousand a year,” Noah said.
The video had been silent. When the kiss ended, sound was added: Jonathan Sharmer and his charity-funded squeeze engaged in something less than sparkling romantic conversation.
“Did this Farrel asshole really show up, Jonny?”
“Don’t look directly. The old Chevy across the street.”
“The scabby little pervert can’t even afford a real car.”
“My guys will junk it. He better have a bus pass for backup.”
“I bet he’s giving himself a hand job right now, watching us.”
“I love your nasty mouth.”
Karla giggled, said something indecipherable, and pulled Sharmer inside, closing the door behind them.
Constance Tavenall — no doubt soon to cleanse herself of the name Sharmer — stared at the TV. She had married the congressman five years ago, before the first of his three successful political campaigns. By creating the Circle of Friends, he wove an image as a compassionate thinker with innovative approaches to social problems, while marriage to this woman lent him class, respectability. For a husband utterly lacking in character, such a spouse was the moral equivalent of arm candy, meant to dazzle the cognoscenti, not with her beauty, but with her sterling reputation, making it less likely that Sharmer would be the object of suspicion or the subject of close scrutiny.
Considering that this had just now become incontestably clear to Constance, her composure was remarkable. The crudeness of what she heard lulled to fire a blush in her. If she harbored anger, she hid it well. Instead, a barely perceptible yet awful sadness manifested as a faint glister in her eyes.
“A highly efficient directional microphone was synchronized with the camera,” Noah explained. “We’ve added a soundtrack only where we’ve got conversation that’ll ruin him.”
“A stripper. Such a cliche.” Even in the thread of quiet sorrow that this tape spun around her, she found a thin filament of humor, the irony that is the mother-of-all in human relationships. “Jonathan cultivates an image of hip sophistication. The press see themselves in him. They’d forgive him anything, even murder, but they’ll turn savage now because the cliche of this will embarrass them.”