“All I got was from Keisha downstairs.”
“She’s such a sweetheart.” She plucked a tissue from the box and dabbed her eyes and nose. “We’ve been calling everywhere all day. He had a meeting at a bank and a meeting with an investment group. He spends a lot of time talking to financial people, trying to steer some of their wealthiest clients to put us on their list of charities. He’s very good at it.”
“When was the last time anybody here talked to him?”
“From what I can tell, it was Keisha. She said she worked until five forty-five and walked out with him. She said he locked up and said good night and then walked to the lot and got in his car. I’d usually have been here, but I had a four o’clock appointment with my doctor. You know how doctors’ offices are. I didn’t get in until nearly five. Oh, God, I’m just babbling, aren’t I?” Her voice was trembling.
“You’ve called Ben?”
“Yes. I didn’t tell him what was going on. I didn’t want to alarm him. Or anybody there. But I said we really needed to hear from David in case he made contact with campaign headquarters.”
“Has David ever done anything like this before?”
She looked at me as if I’d asked a dirty question. “Of course not. He’s the most responsible man I’ve ever known.”
She was talking about the man she loved, that was obvious. Whether David felt the same way, I had no idea.
“I was thinking of calling the police.”
“No!” My anger surprised me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap there. But no — we’ve got enough problems with the press, and if we bring the police in on this the press will have another story to flog us with.”
“I happen to care about him very much.” She blushed.
“Look, Doris. We don’t know what’s going on. People just walk away from things sometimes. Not for long. They just take a day off. I’ve done it myself. Haven’t you?”
“I have a perfect employment record. You never know when you might need your employer to give you a recommendation.”
She was starting to irritate me. It was easy to see her now as the snitch in grade school who reported everything to the teacher.
“The police wouldn’t do anything, anyway. There’d be no reason to. Not at this point. Did you try his home?”
“Yes. I talked to the maid. She said that David came home late and went to bed. She said he had an early breakfast and left for the office. That was around seven o’clock. Nobody’s seen or talked to him since.” She touched a slender finger to the Kleenex box; there seemed to be solace in the act because she sighed. “I’m just so worried about him.”
I took out my card and placed it on her desk. “There’s my cell phone. No matter what time it is, if you learn anything, call me. Meanwhile, I’ll do some checking of my own.”
“You’ll really help me with this?”
“Of course. I just want to keep it quiet while I’m doing it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Conrad. This has — this has just really frightened me.”
She’d always called me Mr. Conrad, even when the group of us had had dinner in Chicago. She was just being proper, I supposed, the way her favorite book instructed her to — The Secretary’s Guide to Anal-Retentive Behavior. There was no point now in trying to get her to call me Dev.
“Remember, call me the minute you hear anything.”
“I will. Of course I will.”
I reached over and placed my hand on hers. “This’ll have a happy ending, Doris. He’ll turn up and he’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Then I was walking to the stairs. I wondered how long it’d be before she hauled her rosary out again.
On the way to campaign headquarters I punched between three radio call-in shows. Each was dealing with the subject of Congresswoman Cooper’s son and the fact that he was being held for questioning by police. Somewhere amid the din of disapproval there was a gentler, more reasoned voice, female, making the point that a fair number of women had put illegitimate children up for adoption and that the fact that they were together again would be good for both of them. And that maybe we — the public we — should wait to see what kind of evidence the police had before judging Bobby guilty. She wasn’t on long. Who wanted to hear this kind of conciliatory crap when finding a tree for lynching was so much more fun?
At four-thirty in the afternoon the front of headquarters was empty except for volunteer staffers. Between rain, fog, and headlines the usual crew of young helpers had found other things to do after school. In the staff office in back, only Ben and Kristin remained. Kristin was laboring through a telephone conversation with a reporter who was obviously checking out various rumors. Duffy was probably floating a few of them — just as we would — but this kind of situation produces fictions through some kind of organic process that borders on magic. Then Susan wasn’t a lesbian after all? Had Susan produced other illegitimate children we didn’t know about and were any of them of the colored persuasion perhaps? Was there any possibility that Susan had been impregnated by an alien and that Bobby was a Venusian spy?
I got myself a cup of coffee and sat down at a Mac to check my e-mail. I needed to get caught up on the two other races my company was handling. The news made me feel better than it should have. I was probably just thankful that there weren’t any scandals associated with either one. We were holding small leads in both, but right now that felt like smashing victories.
“I’m meeting somebody for an early dinner,” Kristin said, slipping into her tan Burberry and grabbing her umbrella. “If either of you need me, I’ll keep my cell on.”
“What could go wrong?” Ben said. “Not on this campaign.”
Kristin laughed. “Oh, God, don’t even joke about it. I just keep thinking the worst is over and then something else happens. It’s been like that since they found Monica Davies in her hotel room.”
“Dev here has assured me that if we can just keep Susan’s police record as a hooker away from the press, everything’ll be fine.”
“And don’t forget when she was teaching grade school and selling crack to her students,” I said. I was glad to be making fun of it all. At this point there wasn’t much else to do with it. “But I’m pretty sure that won’t come out, either.”
“You two are terrible,” Kristin said. “You should have more respect for teachers who sell crack to their third-grade students.”
And with that she was gone into the cold, wet, black afternoon.
Ben took three calls from the press with no more than a few minutes between each one. He was patient and professional until the very end of the third one, when his sighs filled the room. “No, I told you Bobby hadn’t been officially charged with murder. Right now all they’re doing is questioning him.” Pause. “I know there’s a story on one of the radio stations that he’s been charged, but it isn’t true and that’s why we don’t have a statement about him being charged.” Pause. “I’ll tell you what, Nina. Call the police station. They’ll confirm what I’ve said.” Pause. “You’re welcome.”
After he hung up, he turned in his chair and said to me, “Kristin’s off to meet the new one.”
“I figured.”
“It won’t work out any better than the other ones, but right now she won’t admit that to herself.”
“But as soon as he mentions settling down and raising a family—”
“Kristin’s a political junkie just like us. She should settle down and have kids, but she probably won’t.”
“Look at her role models — you and I were shit parents. No offense.”
“She’d be a hell of a lot better at it than we were.”