Only then did it fully dawn on Boldt that the master videotape of his wife’s indiscretions was now erased, and that at the same time Svengrad’s import company had been dealt a serious setback, losing all their business data.
He heard sirens behind them, responding to the burning transformer.
“Thing scared the shit out of me when it blew like that,” LaMoia said, reliving the moment. He was twisted around in his seat trying to get a look toward the fire. But he gave up and came back around, facing the windshield.
“Definitely not something we want terrorists to have.” He explained himself, saying, “The way I see it, I was just doing a little homework.”
“John LaMoia, the good student,” Boldt suggested. “Why doesn’t that work for me?”
“Give it a rest, Sarge.”
As Boldt drove, the sun brightened the eastern horizon. Boldt would be in bed before it was fully dawn.
“Thank you, John.” Said to the windshield, but as sincerely as he could make it.
“I love shit like that. Blowing stuff up. Setting shit on fire. My pleasure, Sarge, believe me.” LaMoia chuckled to himself. “Besides, what are friends for?”
Boldt searched the papers the following morning for any mention of an unexplained power outage in south Ballard. He found a paragraph about the transformer fire. He’d been placed on administrative leave pending a full review of the Special Ops at the theater and WestCorp Center. Pahwan Riz and Marc O’Brien were too experienced not to recognize internal interference when they saw it. Proving it would be next to impossible, given the loyalty of Daphne, John, and Bobbie Gaynes. Boldt would ride it out, as he’d ridden out other challenges in the past.
Danny Foreman was taking early retirement, no charges filed.
Liz returned from a meeting at the bank that Tuesday afternoon, Boldt having gassed up the car and packed it for the drive to Wenatchee. They were to pick up the kids there and keep driving. Sun Valley. Yellowstone, with the tourists gone. They would loop around on one of the most beautiful highways in the country, on the western border of Montana, and on up to Coeur d’Alene, where they’d spend most of the next week doing nothing. Boldt didn’t know how it would go; he wasn’t great at doing nothing.
Liz was quiet for the early part of the drive. She’d climbed in with a stack of papers, her purse, and a newspaper.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m not going to be offered a contract with MTK.”
“You’ve been fired?” This news hit Boldt in the center of his chest. Not only did Liz love the job, but she’d been one of the top five officers in the bank. There’d never been any question of her being worked into the merger.
“The tape, maybe,” she said. “You think?”
Again, he felt the wind knocked out of him. “No?”
“Or maybe Danny got me in trouble trying to save himself.”
“I would have heard about that,” Boldt said, though he wasn’t so sure all of a sudden. “Fired?”
“Phillip doesn’t trust me-that’s at the bottom of it. Nor should he! I’ll get a good letter. I keep the pension. It’s an honorable discharge,” she said, trying to make light of it.
He knew how devastated she had to be, and admired her for her display of courage. “I seriously doubt it was the tape,” he said. Then asked, “Are you okay with this?”
“No. But I am ready for a change. Consulting, maybe. More time at home afternoons.” She added philosophically, “You never fully undo something like this. If there’s one overriding lesson, for me anyway, it’s about the repercussions of our actions. Maybe there’s some closure now. I’ve carried this-we’ve both carried this-for a long time. It would be nice to get it behind us.”
Boldt glanced into the rearview mirror, the road receding behind them, and he nearly mentioned the symbolism to her but thought better of it. He kept it to himself. He hoped Svengrad would be jailed over tax evasion, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever stop looking over his shoulder. Svengrad had a long reach. He kept this to himself as well.
Liz was quiet for a few minutes, looking out her window as if the sights there were new to her. Then she reached down and unfolded the newspaper and opened it, fingering through to the business section. “Did you read this morning’s paper?”
He had, but he claimed not to have. Nothing got past her.
She turned it over to below the fold. “Tell me about this.”
Boldt kept driving, eyes on the road.
“An adoption agency, an inner-city soccer program. Was I supposed to miss this?”
He adjusted the rearview mirror, still saying nothing.
“Six million dollars in anonymous donations between the two. How much longer until another eleven in similar donations makes the news?” She said, “You must have forced David to do it, because this isn’t like him.”
“We negotiated certain conditions to his receiving protection, it’s true. Testimony on Danny’s behalf is part of it. Danny wasn’t trying to make himself rich; he was trying to clear a case that no one else cared about. He went about it the wrong way, but Hayes overheard some important statements that Danny made-some, while beating him. Geiser will roll on Svengrad. It’ll come down like a house of cards.”
“You didn’t rescue him to save him,” she said, figuring some of it out on the fly. “You needed him to intercept the wire for you.”
“You make adjustments as you go.”
“All seventeen to nonprofits?”
“Let’s just say that KPLU will be playing jazz for a long, long time.” He switched on the radio. Oscar Peterson. He felt Liz staring at him, could hear her mind churning as she debated what to say, what to ask. Finally, she just sighed, opened the paper, and began reading. “The adoption agency was a nice touch,” she said. “It’s the one Beth and Tony used.”
“Yeah,” Boldt allowed. “I thought that sounded familiar.”
“You’re never going to admit this,” she said, “even to me?”
“When the statute of limitations has run out, we’ll talk.”
“Seven more years together,” she said. “I like the sound of that.”
“Me too,” Boldt admitted, taking the wheel firmly in hand and changing lanes.
TWENTY-FIVE
BOLDT HAD NOT FELT THIS nervous since the birth of their first child, who now sat inside the room behind them. They’d flown down as a family. Liz’s sister’s kid, in her last year of graduate work at UC Berkeley, had offered to take Sarah to the Exploratorium, leaving Boldt and his wife on an uncomfortable wooden bench in a hallway that reminded the lieutenant of waiting outside a courtroom.
Liz had busied herself with projects since leaving the bank. The garage was spanking clean. When she offered to index his jazz albums he knew it was time she found work again. For his part, he was back at work, though staying behind his desk. He’d even booked himself back into the Joke’s on You, playing jazz piano during Happy Hour. He felt at peace each evening from five until seven.
From the room behind them they heard Miles’s inspired piano playing. Boldt recognized the song: a Monk ballad the boy had picked up from Boldt by ear.
It had been difficult, the past month. They had not made love yet, and he wondered if that was going to happen, or if they were doomed to one of those marriages of living together but not fully loving together. He didn’t want that.
She asked, “Do you think-”
“Yes,” he interrupted, knowing as only a husband can know, that this question had to do with the child on the other side of the wall. The kids were the sinew that bound the muscle of the marriage. That muscle kept growing stronger with exercise. “They’re going to tell us he’s unusually gifted, and it’s going to be left to us to accelerate that talent or let him develop like any kid his age.” She nodded. “He knows it all intuitively, Liz. I’ve never seen anything like it.”