I waved hello.
“Let me get a cup of coffee,” he said, and continued down the hall.
I smiled. Doogan couldn’t even wave back until he had coffee.
Doogan was a curious man-he looked just like his name. Late fifties, Irish, beefy, red-faced with short-cropped red hair speckled with gray. He was a blunt object, so different from the mayor, who was young, thin, handsome if effete, so filled with energy one expected shooting sparks from his enthusiasm to start a fire in the wastebasket. But Doogan was necessary. Someone had to scare off sycophants and interest groups who wanted too much of the mayor’s time. Someone had to run interference and fix things out of public view. Doogan was the man sent in to tell someone who’d met with the mayor and claimed Halladay had promised them something to tell them no, the mayor had simply acknowledged the problem. I’d always kind of liked Doogan. There was nothing slick about him. He reminded me of men in Montana-cattle buyers, country commissioners, who, when they bested you, would throw an arm around your shoulder and offer to buy you a beer.
Apparently, the mayor was having his monthly breakfast meeting with our bureau president, H. R. “Tab” Jones. Before being appointed to the bureau, Jones was the mayor’s campaign manager and chief fund-raiser. Jones was tall, loud, slick, and from what I gathered from longtime staff, not as intolerable as past presidents. Jones came from banking and had no background in tourism promotion, which never stopped him. In staff meetings, he threw around hot business buzzwords and catchphrases-“metrics,” “skill sets,” “paradigm,” “worldview”-but he often used them incorrectly. He urged us to “push the envelope” and “think outside the box.” Behind his desk were dozens of current business and motivational books which, I noticed, had uncracked spines.
Doogan finally came back with a cup of coffee and entered my office, shutting the door behind him. He’d never done that before. I looked up and leaned back in my chair. His aftershave smelled sharp.
He shook his head and pursed his lips, as if what he was about to tell me saddened him.
“Brian Eastman?” he said simply. “Not a good idea.”
And with that he was out the door before I could ask him how he knew so quickly, or more important, how the mayor knew.
LATER, LINDA LEANED INTO my office after an executive staff meeting, asked, “What on earth did you do to piss off the mayor?”
“What do you mean?”
She said Tab Jones told her Mayor Halladay specifically asked him about me.
“He asked if you were competent or some kind of loose cannon,” she said. “The mayor asked if you could turn out to be a liability. Tab said he defended you and our department, but I think that’s horse shit. I think he…” she delivered a devastatingly accurate imitation of Jones’s best executive voice, “expressed shock and concern and assured the mayor he’d look into it.” She reverted to her real voice. “Meaning, in all likelihood, your days could be numbered. Which leads me back to my first question: What on earth did you do to piss him off?”
I suddenly felt cold. I desperately needed this job.
“I didn’t do anything to the mayor,” I said. “But it’s possible John Moreland said something to him.” Wondering, did Garrett tell his father what happened Monday night? Or did he lie, make up some story about how he’d come to our house to see Angelina and was jumped by a maniac, his friend left to die in a vacant yard? Did our friendship with Cody, the disgraced cop, or Brian, who’d had a sour business relationship with the major before he was mayor, bring about this sudden interest in me? Were Brian’s inquiries hitting soft spots? Or was it all Judge Moreland?
And I realized the Morelands didn’t need bullets, or paintballs, to attack. Breakfast with the mayor accomplished the same purpose.
“Keep your nose clean,” Linda said, studying me, the wheels spinning in her head. “I can’t afford to lose you right now. I’m not sure we’d be able to hire a replacement, the way things are going with our bud get. And even if we could, it could take months, and we don’t have months. The trade-show season is upon us.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “I always do.”
She nodded, agreeing with me, but still with that look. The look of a race horse owner assessing a promising colt who’d just come up lame.
MY FLIGHT TO BERLIN was to be Sunday, two days away, with arrival at Tegel at 7:05 A.M. Monday. The suitcase was nearly packed upstairs in our room, my briefcase heavy with my laptop, lead sheets, business cards, brochures, a six-pack of Coors beer for Malcolm Harris, who loved the stuff. I would be gone a week, returning the following Saturday. In my mind, I must admit, I was already halfway out the door.
I had tried to convince Melissa to take Angelina and stay with her mother in Seattle while I was gone, but she’d have none of it. Melissa was still smoldering about her parents’ divorce and disliked her mother’s new husband. Even given the circumstances, she didn’t want to see her mother “hat in hand,” as she put it.
CODY STAYED AT OUR HOUSE. He slept on the couch at night and watched television and helped around the house during the day. He’s better at fixing things than I am, plus he had the time. He rehung a couple of sagging doors, fixed the toilet so it would stop running, and painted the kitchen. Melissa said he took breaks only to follow the Coates trial on TV and smoke cigarettes on the deck. He told her he couldn’t remember what he said to Luis that night, but he had a feeling he “went all Dirty Harry on his ass.” He asked if he could stay with us until the reporters camped out around his house gave up and went away, and we agreed. Melissa appreciated his help and companionship, and I liked the idea of his being there with his weapons and training and capacity for violence in case Garrett and his boys showed up again.
Saturday, November 10
NINE
AFTER BRIAN HAD LEFT THE night of Cody’s confrontation with Luis, we didn’t see him for the rest of the week. He was in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and the Bay Area on business. He kept in touch with Melissa by text messaging her from airports between flights. She kept the messages and showed them to me when I got home from work. I reviewed them over coffee Saturday morning.
LEARNING MORE AND MORE THINGS ABOUT THE JUDGE. CAN’T WAIT TO TELL YOU.
And,
TALKED TO ONE OF MY FRIENDS WHO DABBLES ON THE DARK SIDE. HE SAID THERE MIGHT BE SOME PHOTOS THAT WILL BRING THE JUDGE DOWN. I’LL FOLLOW UP. IT MAY COST US SOME CASH.
“Photos of what?” I asked.
“I texted him back,” she said. “He hasn’t replied.”
She sighed. “You know how dramatic he can be. He won’t just tell us, he’ll want to show us.”
Cody stood in the doorway in a paint-splattered T-shirt and a three-day growth of beard. He’d overheard.
“Let’s take a drive downtown,” he said to me.
“Do you mind?” I asked Melissa.
“No,” she said, “as long as you’ll bring dinner home and not drink too much. Remember, you’ve got an early-morning flight tomorrow.”
As if I didn’t know.
IN SEVERAL NATIONAL SURVEYS, Denver has been cited as the least-overweight large city in the country, usually neck and neck with Portland. Health and recreation is a religion. I know this because I sell it overseas. In contrast, Cody sucked on his cigarette with a kind of junkie intensity, sat back in the seat, closed his eyes, and slowly blew the smoke out. He smoked with such needy and obvious plea sure that he made me wish I was a smoker.
On workdays, there was traffic. Lots of traffic. On those days I compared the street we lived on out in the western suburbs to a tiny seasonal creek, like the one that used to flow through the ranch my father managed for a while near Great Falls. Like that creek, our street/creek trickled into a busier residential street (or stream, in my analogy) which poured into a tributary (C-470) of a great rushing river (Interstate 70 to I-25) toward downtown. Once I became a part of the river hurtling down the valley toward the high-rises, stadiums, and inner city, I became a different animal, a fish fearing for his life. Currents of traffic coursed across lanes while the entire river picked up speed and volume. Outlets (exits) lessened the pressure only temporarily, because inlets (entrance ramps) produced greater flows. I was a little fish in an ocean of them. At night, like a spawning salmon, I would navigate the powerful river of traffic back to my sandy creek bed of origin where Melissa and nine-month-old Angelina would be waiting for me, and all would be right with the world.