The man doesn’t see me sitting here, and Jack’s view is blocked by the hulk in front of him.
The guy tells Jack it’s time to go see the ‘guv, down in the corner office. Not the big place out front, the little office in the back, where the real deals are cut,’ he says.
Jack wishes him luck.
‘No need for luck when it’s wired,’ the man says. What every lobbyist would have you think, that his hand is up some elected official’s ass, making the mouth work.
Clinton Brady is one of the better-known members of the third house, the unofficial, but many would insist most powerful branch of government, the six hundred or so registered lobbyists in this town.
He pats Jack on the shoulder and turns to leave. In a blue serge suit with sleeves an inch too short, Brady looks like something that climbed down from the beanstalk. He straightens up, noticing that strangers are in earshot, and cants his head to one side in order to clear the transom over Jack’s door.
Brady represents insurance interests the way the Führer represented Germany, a lot of blitzkrieg and scorched earth to any who oppose him. With his contacts and high profile he has become more important than the interests he represents. He owns whole committees and sells his services to clients like the mob sells protection. He has by now learned that giving money to Jack and his ilk is like feeding fish to seals. Word has it for the last decade that Jack has been living in one of Brady’s pockets. At this moment the lacquered grin on Vega’s face would do little to dispel this thought.
‘Clint needs some copies. Clint needs to make a call. Clint needs this. Clint needs that.’ Jack is Clint’s own gofer, doing his own form of the soft-shoe between Clint and the secretary. He takes a pile of papers from Brady and hands it to his secretary to be copied. The woman moves with the flash of lightning, like her job depends on this. Brady’s then ushered down the hall to some subaltern’s office, a detour to make a few phone calls before heading off to see the ‘guv’ — no doubt a telephone request to his clients to wire more cash. Politicians in this state don’t accept reasoned argument, and they don’t take American Express.
Jack gives me a wag of his head and no greeting. I follow him into his office, where he closes the door behind us.
Though the consumption of alcohol in the Capitol is a misdemeanor, Jack maintains a rolling liquor cabinet in a walk-in closet, more jingling glass than the dime toss at a county fair.
‘A drink?’ he says.
I decline. He would probably have me arrested.
The office is hot, the product of an hour of deal-making behind a closed door. I take off my jacket, hold it in my lap as I sit in one of the chairs on this side of the desk.
Jack is sweating like a bull, but still wearing his coat. He compensates with a tumbler of iced scotch, and dances toward the business side of his desk, where he finally lands in cushioned leather and swivels to face me.
‘Been talking to my lawyers,’ he says. ‘They told me to stay away from you.’ Jack’s contempt for lawyers has him ignoring his own.
The wall behind him is covered with political mementos, plaques and resolutions of appreciation from business and civic leaders in his district. These are mostly people trying to get where Jack is, who figure that planting their nose up his ass can’t hurt. There are three large trophies centered on his credenza. Perhaps things other people let him win, little bronze men embedded on marble pedestals with a single arm outstretched. I can read Jack’s name engraved on the brass plate of one of these.
He holds up a few papers from the center of his desk, letter-sized, looking like receipts.
‘Dealing with the funeral home,’ he says. ‘Gonna have to be closed casket.’ He looks at me to see if I will ask why.
‘Her head,’ he finally says, shaking his own. ‘One shot to the head. The morticians couldn’t do much.’
The willfulness of this, a shot to the head, not some heedless act of instant provocation, has its effect on me.
‘I suspect there are a lot of things you don’t know,’ he says. ‘She was executed. There are pictures,’ he tells me.
I’m thinking coroner’s shots. Then he says: ‘Of Laurel, at the house.’
‘Shooting Melanie?’ I cannot resist.
He shakes his head. ‘May as well be. Videotape of her arguing with Melanie on the front steps. Neighbors heard it. Security camera filmed it all until Laurel smashed the lens with a flowerpot.’ The way he says this, Jack clearly imputes a little method to Laurel’s madness, a purpose in destroying the camera. Something I suspect he’s either picked up from the cops or planted in their minds.
‘Where were you?’
‘I had a meeting. Didn’t get home till late that night.’
It was Jack who found Melanie’s body in the master bath and called police. According to what he tells me, forensics figures that about three hours passed between the row on the porch and the murder.
‘They believe Laurel probably went to get a gun and had to think about it for a while before she worked up the nerve.’ The ‘they’ Jack is talking about I suspect is Jimmy Lama, who is busy trying to inspire thoughts of premeditation and deliberation to some wily prosecutor.
‘How do you know it was her?’
A pained expression, like give me a break.
‘I suppose you still don’t know where she is?’
‘I don’t,’ I tell him.
‘Not a word from her?’
‘And if I had, I would tell you?’ I smile.
‘Touché,’ he says.
Jack’s musing over his drink, talking about Melanie’s funeral, which is scheduled for tomorrow.
I had not expected to see him in the office, a period for grieving. I tell him this.
‘It’s easier to cope if I go about my day,’ he says. Jack’s talking like he’s had time to think. The immediate rush of anger so evident at his house that night has passed. This is not unlike Vega. Jack has always lacked the stamina to hold anger for long. He talks about the kids, what to do with their mother. It’s not easy. It’s not his decision, but he and his children will have to live with whatever happens to Laurel.
‘For their sake,’ he says, ‘I cannot see her sentenced to death.’ It’s starting to sound like Jack is coming to his senses.
There are little beads of sweat running down his nose. He puts the side of the iced tumbler to his forehead and catches the sweat with the sleeve of his coat.
‘They will find her,’ he says. He is dogged in this. ‘What I want to know is what you’re going to do,’ he says.
I look at him.
‘When they catch her. Are you going to represent her?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ I tell him.
He smiles. Bullshit is Jack’s native tongue. By nature he is not confrontational. Manipulation is his special gift. I get a lot of penetrating looks from across the desk as he sizes me for some pitch.
‘I suppose it would make sense if she were represented by someone who knew the family well. I mean the whole situation. It would be easier,’ he says, ‘for the kids, for all concerned if it was over quickly. And the evidence,’ he says, ‘is irrefutable.’ He goes on at length that there is a certain symmetry and sense to my representing Laurel. At least then I’d be in a position, in his words, ‘to make it easy on the family.’ Jack is taking me on his own sojourn of mercy. If he can’t keep me away from the case, Vega’s busy mining the circumstances for some silver lining. He would use me like a handy tool to have Laurel cop a quick plea.
‘It’ll keep her out of the deathhouse,’ he says. ‘And the kids. It’ll be easier on them.’ It’s like he’s talking to himself, thinking out loud. ‘Of course you’d have to know the circumstances. All the details. How she did it and why.’ He stops for a moment and looks at me as if perhaps I already know these and will share them with him now.
This is a conversation we shouldn’t be having. It is not only premature, it is ridiculous. I tell him that.