Conley enjoyed the phrase. "I thought he was a grieving widower."
"Not that kind of an offer, Jedd." She lifted her legs up onto the couch and tucked them under her. "So the Senate thing? Is that what you're uptight about?"
Conley paused, threw her a direct look. "You don't let much get by you, do you?"
"You'd be surprised. You said it was work and life. Running for the Senate seemed to qualify."
"Well." He sipped his drink. "Sometimes the profile is difficult to manage, that's all. It gets inside you." Apparently making up his mind to tell her about it, he went on. "As for uptight, I had to let go my assistant today and if history's any judge, she's going to slap me with some kind of bullshit lawsuit, when the plain truth is the woman was just incompetent and couldn't do the job. But you fire anybody nowadays, you become the bad guy. You know this. Hell, everybody knows it, and still it goes on." He sighed in frustration. "Anyway, it's done now. I'm just hoping I documented everything correctly. We'll see what happens." "Well, if you need a lawyer…"
He chortled quietly. "I'll keep you in mind, thanks. Maybe she won't do anything. Because God knows I made sure I never did anything even remotely suggestive around her. If there's one thing I've learned in life, if you're going to mess around, you don't dip your pen in the company inkwell. If you choose to mess around at all, that is." He drank off some more of his scotch.
A silence, pregnant with their mutual history, gathered in the spaces between the low-volume tinkle of piano music from Gina's radio.
Jedd finally looked down the length of the couch at her. "You know, Gina, I said it the other day when you came to the Travelodge, and I meant it then, but I'll say it again. You haven't aged a day in twenty years."
"Not true," she said, "I've aged about twenty years, and I feel every one of them."
"Well, you don't show them. No makeup, hair still wet… and look at you right now. You're just incredible."
She gave him a long and piercing look. A smile tickled the corners of her mouth, and then slowly she shook her head from side to side. "I don't think so, Jedd. Nice try, but it wouldn't be a good idea."
"It was never a bad idea with us. If memory serves, and it does."
"Yes, it does. But it would be now. A bad idea."
"Why? What would be different?"
"You being married, for one thing."
"Lexi wouldn't ever have to know. We used to be pretty discreet, if I recall."
"But I would know, Jedd. A girl's got to have a few rules, and not sleeping with married men is one of mine."
"Okay, we won't sleep." "No," she said.
He wagged his head back and forth. No hard press, but he was enjoying the game. "It doesn't really seem right."
"It does to me, I'm afraid." She finished her Oban and got herself upright, off the couch. "I'm flattered, Jedd, really. You've made my week. But no's got to mean no."
"Fair enough, if you really mean it." He was up, then, closing the small space between them, standing in front of her. "I'll make a deal with you. If you can still say no after one small kiss, I'll take it as your final answer."
She looked up into his eyes, confident enough, amused enough, to give him a full smile. "My momma didn't raise no fools, Jedd. Now you can either finish your drink and go, or you can go right now, but we're not doing this. Any little part of it. You need to go home and kiss your wife."
"She'll be in bed."
"So wake her up."
"Come on, Gina. It's not about her. It's about you and me."
"There is no you and me, Jedd." Ducking around him, giving herself room, she stopped behind the couch. "If you leave your wife, after the divorce is final, I might let you buy me a drink, and we'll see where that might take us. But even then, it's not a promise. It's a maybe."
"You're a cruel woman, Roake."
"I am," she admitted. "And getting crueler all the time." Crossing over to the door, she put her hand on the knob and turned back to face him. "Now, are you going to finish your drink first or just walk?"
Accepting defeat with a nod, Jedd toasted her silently again, and drained his drink. Placing the glass carefully on the coffee table, he got to the now-open door and stopped. "You can't blame a guy for trying," he said.
"Well, you can a little bit," she said. "Good night, Jedd." With a gentle shove, she moved him along until he was outside, then closed the door behind him and, with a sudden emphasis, she threw the dead bolt hard enough to make sure he heard it.
It took Juhle about an hour with his cell phone-tracking technicians to trace the approximate location from which Gina had called him to arrange Stuart Gorman's surrender the next morning, and most of another hour to arrange for two SF police officers and their squad car and some San Mateo County SWAT-team backup to meet him when he closed in for the arrest.
Cell phone technology possibly hadn't been much a part of the normal police arsenal the last time Gina had worked a major case, but now Juhle thought that everyone in the crime business must know that it was child's play to pinpoint a locale from a phone call. Wyatt Hunt had told him in passing that Gina had been out of the game awhile, and that Stuart was her first murder case ever, but even so he was amazed and happily surprised when she called him on her cell phone in Stuart's presence.
And especially after the hardball she'd been playing with him on the interview and everything else, he wasn't in the mood to be doing her any favors anyway. And if Gina thought that Juhle could know the whereabouts of an armed suspect who was the object of a murder warrant and knowingly let that person remain at large for even one extra minute, she had another think coming.
So no sooner had Juhle gotten off the phone with Gina than he told his wife that he'd be out late, and put some wheels in motion. The cell tower site gave him a confined area to search. All the district cars started checking out parking lots for vehicle license numbers-by now, the plates Stuart had stolen had been reported. The result was that at 11:21 p.m. Juhle flashed his badge at the night clerk at the Hollywood Motel, showed the man a recent picture of his suspect, and was told that the man he sought had checked in this afternoon under the alias of Stuart Ghoti. The clerk specifically remembered because he paid cash, which he did not see too often. He was in Room 29, around the corner and about halfway down the block.
Now, just after 11:30, Juhle had the street blocked off in both directions by the San Mateo County presence, and had his own San Francisco team of two officers out of their car, accompanying him to the motel room door. All of the men had their holsters unbuttoned, ready for action.
Stopping at the door, Juhle listened for a minute and heard the low hum of a television that also cast its flickering glow on the window blinds. He figured he had enough adrenaline flowing now to pull a locomotive uphill, and tried to gather himself to get control over his emotions and excitement, but it was a losing battle. For one last time, he considered other options, such as having one of his backup people call the room. Or even simply knocking on the door and announcing himself. But he'd already rejected those options- Stuart Gorman might try to flee through them all in one of those situations; he might learn that he was surrounded and, panic-stricken, commit suicide with the gun that Juhle believed in his heart that he still and had always had with him.
No, the thing to do was what he'd decided to do. A no-warning storming of the room. None of this bullhorn, come-out-with-your-hands-up bullshit. They had the "door opener," a massive, cylindrical metal weight on chains. One swing at the flimsy motel door would be all it took. Looking side to side at his two acolytes, he nodded.