American Sextet (16 page)

Her body began to tremble, a paroxysm that he'd never seen
before, she was transformed before his eyes. Her ashen complexion turned dead
white, the skin tightening over her face. It frightened him and he came forward
to embrace her. Her body was cold.

"I'll never leave you, Dot," he said.
"Forgive me for saying that."

My child, my love, he wanted to say.

"But it's time you stopped being a toy for
others," he said, holding her still, his breath a tiny breeze trying to
stir a dying flame. "These men know how to survive. They're shrewd.
They'll know how to roll with the punches." Hadn't he convinced himself of
that?

"But why are people so interested?" she said
sadly.

"Why did they want to see you dance naked?"

"Nobody got hurt. It made them feel good to watch
me."

Was he losing his ability to influence her? Before she
didn't need elaborate explanations. But now ... Why couldn't she have tossed
them off like turning tricks?

"Dorothy, it's impossible to be emotionally involved
with six men," he said, still holding her, feeling the sweetness of her
flesh. She was a miracle, like a divining rod that could seek and find man's
pleasure.

"I truly love you," he said. Sacred words. Had he
locked them away for just this occasion? Never once had she told him that. Now
he yearned to hear it more than anything he had ever wanted. Say it, he begged
in his heart. But she said nothing, seemed lost in thought. He tried to kiss
her, but she turned her face away.

"Must we?" she asked.

He stroked her spun hair, then caressed her face, feeling
the moisture of fresh tears. It was the first time he had ever seen her cry.

"It'll only hurt for a little bit," he whispered.
"And I'll be with you no matter what," he added, not sure it mattered
any longer.

Her lack of malice would be an asset, he thought. The
public would love her, identify with her ... America's innocent darling. They
would look at her as a beautiful fool manipulated by a cynic. Svengali's doll.
That, of course, was the real story. The other was simply where the profit was.
Writing it was going to be painful as hell.

"Can I stay here for a little while longer?"

She got up and moved to another chair.

He debated for a moment. There was no harm in that.

"I do love this place. All white and clean." She
looked around and caressed the arm of the couch.

"Fantasy land," he murmured. It was a shock to
have discovered that she was capable of another life. More specifically, a life
without him.

"I want to stay here."

He studied her face, a mask now, no longer as
comprehensible as before.

"I don't," he said, "I hate it here."

"By myself," she whispered. Again he fought to
hold back his anger. You can't take her screaming and protesting into the
arena, he reasoned. The entire credibility of the enterprise was at stake.
Without her complete cooperation, the thing would disintegrate. He hadn't even
considered that possibility.

"This is ridiculous, Dot." He moved toward her
again, lifting her gently. She was as cold and rigid as stone.
"Dammit," he muttered, releasing her. Without him, without his
protection, his love, she was like a reed in the wind. He sensed that her
balance was delicate, her calibrations foreign and mysterious. There was too
much at stake to impose his will by force.

"They're not worth it."

She had turned her eyes away as if to hide them from him.

"They're my friends," she whispered, between deep
swallows.

It was the final straw.

"I'm trying to give you a life," he said, his
words spewing out in a great flume of frustration. How dare she do this to him.
"You're nothing but a goddamned bitch," he said, his vehemence beyond
control. "A goddamned ungrateful bitch!"

He came back to where she sat and lifted her out of the
chair.

"Don't you understand? Nobody cares. All these sons of
bitches care about is manipulating other people to satisfy their own egos. To
them you're nothing but a piece of meat. A whore. A toy to be played with. Is
that what you want to be all your life? I've figured out a way to make you a
person. To give you enough so you don't have to be anybody's slave. Can't you
get that into your thick skull?" He paused, choking on the words, gasping
in a sudden coughing fit. Her eyes still averted, she remained impassive.

"You wait," he continued, when he had stopped
coughing. "Wait till that beautiful body starts to corrode and fall apart.
It does that, you know. You'll be dry, shrunken, worthless. Those tits."
He pinched her breasts. "Like wrinkled melons. Soon it won't be just
people who fuck you over. Nature will take its course. It'll chew you up and
spit you out like it does everybody. And what will you have left? What will you
be? Nothing. For crying out loud, I'm trying to save your life. I'm trying to
set you free." He paused again, lowering his voice. "Me as well. No
more ass kissing. No more hypocrisy. Can't you see it? We'll be getting even.
Fighting back. Don't worry about those assholes. Not one is worth the
candle."

As he spoke, she had slowly turned away again. He felt
impotent in his frustration. He wanted to lash out at her, pummel her into
submission.

"All right," he said. "You stay here by
yourself. There's nothing but lies here anyway. Fraud. Bullshit. You'll crawl
back. Crawl like a fucking lizard, begging me to take you back. You push me too
far, I'll wash my hands of you. Send you back to Hiram. How would you like that?"
Behind his eyes a great wave of blood seemed to break, boiling with foam.

"You stay then," he shouted. "You stay. I
can easily make this thing work without you."

Striding out of the apartment, he slammed the door behind
him. In the car he slumped behind the wheel, enervated. Sitting in the cool,
silent night, it was as though another wave broke inside of him, and his body
was suddenly wracked by sobs, his entire being flooded with sorrow.

Dorothy, he thought silently as he peered at her lit
window, I didn't know it would be like this either.

Fiona and Cates sat in the waiting room of Tate O'Haire's
massive office in the Rayburn Building. Ironically, it was not far from Bruce
Rosen's office. In the two years since she'd last seen him, she'd thought of
him only occasionally. Another dead love. She had a strange talent for getting
involved with the wrong man. Another sweaty-palmed politician gearing up for
the next election, she sighed, observing O'Haire's intense young staff, puffed
up with arrogance and self-importance.

Yet, it was because of Bruce that she was in O'Haire's
office instead of that of Justice Strauss. Every experience teaches, she
assured herself. Because of her relationship with Bruce, she knew more about
congressmen, their fears and vulnerabilities.

"The name of the game is re-election," he had
told her, and in so doing reflected the principal concern of his life.

"Some of them would sell their mother," she
muttered to Cates, realizing that the bitterness of her affair with Bruce still
lingered. She was assembling quite a rogue's gallery of her own.

It was their regular day off, making the risk of
interrogation even more dangerous. It implied officially sanctioned police
business, which, in the technical sense, was a lie.

"Are you sure?" Cates had asked when she told him
she was going to see O'Haire.

"I'm not sure I'm sure."

What she was sure about was that there could be no turning
back. As for Cates, he had made his decision. In the light of her experience
with indecisiveness, that was something worth admiring in anyone.

"Martin. Strauss. O'Haire." An odd trio. They
spoke them aloud, wrote them down, mulled them over, speculated.

What were O'Haire's fingerprints doing on the closet rail
in Dorothy's apartment? The prints of Justice Strauss were easier to explain.
"El Kinko" was the way they referred to him.

"She was a busy lady," Cates had said. "But
was she a murder victim?"

"If she was," Fiona said, pausing to consider her
own determined reaction, "I intend to prove it."

They had appeared at O'Haire's office without an
appointment, a typical police investigatory ploy--catch them off guard if you
can.

"Let me be the heavy," she'd said to Cates.

"Be my guest."

From Bruce, she learned they were a crafty lot,
intimidating and arrogant under a thick patina of charm. She reasoned that
their relationship wasn't a total loss, after all. When the receptionist tried
to put them off, Fiona flashed her badge.

"Police business."

She glared at the young girl, who looked bug-eyed at the
shield. "Confidential."

"I'll check," she said, leaving the room.
"Have a seat..." Returning quickly, she said, "The congressman
will be with you in a moment."

The wait would give him time to carve out a position,
create a public posture. It also gave Fiona time to hone her own approach.
Above all, she had to hold herself back from making any overt accusations. In a
way, he had the advantage. She was dueling in the dark.

O'Haire was a large, florid-faced man in his early fifties,
bulky and well-groomed with a fresh boutonnière in the lapel of his pinstriped
suit. Shanty, she decided immediately, using her ingrained ethnic instinct.
Takes one to know one. His eyes were steel gray and although his lips smiled,
his eyes inspected.

"An O'Haire can never refuse a FitzGerald," he
said, leaning back in his chair. His stubby fingers played with a ballpoint
pen. "What's your pleasure?" Noting her dominance, he had dismissed
Cates, who sat impassively beside her.

"I'm investigating a death," she began, her
throat suddenly dry. She cleared it with a cough.

"The great leveler," he said. There was the
barest hint of an affected brogue. She studied him carefully. She had
deliberately said death, not suicide. She took out her notebook.

"Just routine," she said, looking at Cates, whose
chocolate complexion had lost its gloss. "A woman. A young woman. She went
under the name of Dorothy Curtis."

"Dorothy Curtis." O'Haire lifted his eyes as if
the name might be engraved on the ceiling. "No," he said, showing not
the slightest difference in attitude.

"Early twenties. Worked in the makeup department of
Saks. Lived on Cathedral Avenue."

Still no reaction. Fiona's stomach tightened. The whole
exercise was meant to connect them. It wasn't going the way she had expected.
He was too impassive, too slick, a good actor. She stole a glance at Cates, who
turned away, looking at the pictures on the wall.

"You didn't know her?" she asked.

"She might have worked for me."

He straightened in his chair and pressed a buzzer before
she could stop him. "We'll see." A middle-aged woman came in.
"What was her name again?" he asked, turning to Fiona.

"Curtis. Dorothy Curtis."

The middle-aged woman looked thoughtful, obviously
searching her memory. An old warhorse, Fiona thought, used to such ploys.
Usually these women knew more about their bosses than they did about
themselves.

"Not familiar." Her face brightened. "We had
a Bob Curtis once."

"Wrong sex," Fiona said pointedly, looking at
O'Haire.

"Thank you, Mrs. Armbruster," O'Haire said,
dismissing her, making it clear that if Mrs. Armbruster didn't know then no one
would. When she left, he settled back in his chair and began to play with the
pen again, challenging her. He was a cool number, Fiona thought, thinking of
Bruce. They were all cool numbers. But this one was a lying bastard.

"Is there anything more?" O'Haire asked
pleasantly. He was playing with her now, feigning profound disinterest. What he
was doing was waiting for her to unreel information, although he betrayed none
of the curiosity that must have been eating at him.

"Well, I guess that's it then," Fiona said,
slapping her notebook shut. Two can play that game. She had often used it in
her interrogations. Setting bait. Dangling it on the hook before the startled
fish.

"Anytime I can help the MPD," he said, standing
up, thrusting out his hand. She felt his stubby cold fingers. This one, she
decided, was used to power, used to winning. Cates rose as well, but O'Haire
didn't offer his hand. She turned her back and started for the door, calling
his bluff.

"I hope you have better luck elsewhere," he said,
forcing her to turn. He was still smiling, but his fingers had whitened as he
gripped the rim of the desk.

"It could have been a mistake," she said,
watching his eyes now. Had she caught the glint of fear? "Probably
was." She turned again and reached for the doorknob.

"A death, you said." His words tumbled out. There
it was, she thought. She had the bastard.

"That's about the only thing we're sure of," she
said, turning again. Beside her, Cates shifted nervously.

"I don't understand." Despite what seemed like a
valiant effort, his smile collapsed.

Easy, she told herself, excited now by his unwitting
confirmation.

"We found her in the ravine under the Ellington
Bridge."

"A suicide?" The bit was in his mouth now.

She deliberately hung her hesitation in the room like a
tinsel mobile to tinkle in the breeze.

"Maybe." It was a bloated maybe, pregnant with
possibilities.

"I see," he said. "Are you talking to
others? Other congressmen? Mrs. Armbruster can check around. See who she worked
for."

He was snapping voraciously at the bait, obviously
wondering if he had been singled out. It was the one bit of information she was
determined to withhold. Not yet, she cautioned herself.

"That won't be necessary," she said pointedly, opening
the door now. She did not look back.

Sipping coffee at Sherry's, she was feeling proud of
herself. A mighty man was dangling in her rope. All she had to do was tighten
the noose and ... and what?

"Smooth as silk, that one," she said. "But I
got to his gut. He definitely won't have a good night."

"No. I guess not," Cates said morosely. He was
obviously troubled.

"You saw it. He's scared out of his wits."

"Yeah," he said, avoiding her eyes.

"Now all we have to do is wait."

"Wait?"

"I know those bastards. He's hiding something and he
thinks we know what it is. He can't live with that. No politician can."

"So what will he do?"

She hadn't moved that far ahead.

"He's guilty of something," she said, ignoring
the question. "He was in Dorothy's apartment. We know that. We also know
that somebody wiped away evidence. Or tried to."

"The justice?" He said it by rote, forcing his
interest. Was he simply another weak man, she wondered, getting cold feet?

"We're pretty sure of that one. He thought he had
cleaned up all his garbage. Imagine. A damned Supreme Court justice. We'll get
to him as well." She felt her heart pound. "They think they can get
away with anything."

"Like murdering Dorothy?"

"Maybe. We've got one hell of a motive. Fear of
exposure. That's the big enchilada. I've seen it. When it comes to that,
nothing stands in their way."

"You think Dorothy threatened to expose them? That
it?"

What other weapon did she have? she thought. How dare he
question that? She thought of Dorothy, waiting. Always waiting. A thing to be
used at their whim, always ready at their beck and call. She knew what that
meant.

"We'll flush them out," she said, her excitement
at the prospect growing.

"I'm sorry, Fiona, but I just can't see them as
killers."

"They are. I know they are." She felt the wave of
hysteria begin and hid her trembling hands under the table. "One way or
another."

Cates shook his head, lifting his eyes to observe her.

"But where is the crime?" he asked softly.

She let her mind cool. It must sound reasoned, calm, squeezed
of emotion.

"It's there. I know it is."

"How do you know?"

She felt the condescension. He was talking to her as if she
were a child. He was a man. How could he know?

"They use people," she said. "They think
nobody can touch them. They think they own everything."

"It's getting heavy, Fiona. I'm sorry. We still have
to prove a crime."

"We will."

"How?"

"I know what I'm doing. If you want out, say so."

"It's getting out of hand, Fiona. You're pushing too
hard. It's not..." He hesitated, his reluctance palpable. He can't
possibly understand, she thought. "...professional."

"Well then..." She got up indignantly, glaring at
him. Continuing to sit, he looked at her and shook his head.

"You're foreclosing on other possibilities. She could
have been a part-time hooker."

"Hookers aren't jumpers. They don't suffer. They just
do business." He can't know what I know, she thought as she turned to walk
away. He came after her.

"It's that guy," he said, following her into the
street. "That Clint. I'm not stupid, Fiona. I could see it."

"Fuck you."

"He's made you crazy, right? It's not just the jumper.
Dammit, Fiona. Can't you see that I'm worried about you?"

She continued to walk away, leaving him behind. Worry about
yourself, buster, she muttered. I know I'm right. I'd stake my life on it. My
life--the image scared her. Clint, I need you now, she cried, walking swiftly.
At a telephone booth, she stopped and dialed Dr. Benton's number. His smooth
voice soothed her, offering the promise of solace.

"I need to see you, Dr. Benton. I'm coming right
over."

"Of course," he said quietly.

Taking a cab, she was at his home in Northeast Washington
quicker than expected. He was still in his robe. As she sat down in his neat,
book-lined living room, with its pictures and memorabilia of his dead wife, she
realized that it had been a long time since she had gone there. Up until now
Clint had filled all her needs, making her whole.

"A woman alone is an unnatural state," she said,
after he had brought coffee and cookies. Oreos. They had had a good laugh over
that on other occasions. His were always the light ones with chocolate inside.

"Anybody alone is an unnatural state," he
replied, glancing at a picture of his wife.

She reached out and he took her hand.

"Maybe I've got the cop's malady. Overidentifying with
a victim."

"The girl? The suicide?"

"It's not suicide," she said quickly.

"Not suicide?"

The hysteria began again and she took a deep gulp of air to
calm herself.

She looked at him and shook her head. "Put on your
white collar, Dr. Benton." He remained quiet and squeezed her hand.

"I'm out of control. I saw her as me. Dumb me, maybe
trapped like her. I can't believe I let it happen, falling for a married man
... Anyway, I forced the issue. I mean this case. Like it was me, with no place
to turn." He started to speak. "Don't say anything. I'm fighting it.
It's worse than giving up cigarettes, I can tell you that. It is the most
horrendous emotion, this love thing. It debilitates the brain, crowds out
reason. Makes your body turn to goo. And inside I'm screaming with unrequited
whatever. Jesus. Don't I sound freaky?" Breathing deeply again, she leaned
her head on the back of the chair.

"A little hysterical maybe."

"Too bad I have to uncork it on you."

"Who knows, maybe someday it'll be me bottled
up."

"You? Never. You got it out of your system." She
waved toward his wife's picture.

"One woman. One love. No pain in it though. Only joy.
Except once..." Lowering his eyes, he swallowed, and she lifted his hand
and kissed it.

"When He wants you, He gets you. The least He could
have done was coordinate it," Dr. Benton said.

"I'm making you morbid."

"Maudlin. Not morbid," he responded cheerfully.