Down Here (16 page)

“Oh. Is that where you—?”

“I think so,” I said, as if I was considering the idea for the first time. “I met Jack Olsen once,” I told her. “He was a great truth-seeker. Any reporter would want to follow in his footsteps.”

She turned to face me. “So what happens now?”

“You make some decisions,” I said. “In order of importance: Do you want to give me a chance with you? Do you want to talk to me about the impact the wrongful imprisonment of a loved one has on a family? Do you want to ask your brother if he’d be interested in doing an interview?”

“But I—”

“You don’t have to decide
any
of it tonight, Laura,” I said, holding her eyes in the reflected glow of the diner’s windows.

I
t was almost one in the morning when we pulled into her garage. She killed the engine. Turned to look at me. “I want you to come back up with me,” she said.

“Because you decided . . . ?”

“On
all
of it, yes.”

She leaned over, kissed me under my bad eye.

“Okay?” she said.

^“
Y
ou have a lot of scars,” she whispered, later.

“I’ve had a lot of surgery,” I said. “Different things.”

“Where did the doctor who did this one get his license, in a school for the blind?” she said, licking the chopped-off top of my right ear.

“Sometimes, it’s not neatness that counts.”

“What, then?”

“Speed.”

“Oh. Were you wounded?”

“Yeah.”

“In Vietnam?”

“No. Africa.”

“Africa? You were a . . . like a mercenary?”

“No,” I said. “I was there covering a story.”

“What story?” she asked.

So I told her a story. About the genocidal slaughter in Rwanda, the rape of the Congo, the “blood diamonds” of Sierra Leone, and how they got that name.

Everything I told her was true, except for the part about me being there. I filled in the blanks—right down to how it feels to get malaria—from my Biafra days. But I didn’t say a word about
those
experiences. J. P. Hauser wouldn’t have been old enough to have them.

“You’ve really led a life,” she said.

“Not me, personally,” I told her. “Reporters aren’t supposed to lead lives, they’re supposed to lead people
to
lives . . . other people’s lives. I didn’t have to be in Africa. The story wasn’t me, it was those people who
did
have to be there, see?”

“Yes. But, still, it must be exciting. There’s a woman I watch on CNN all the time. It seems, every time something major happens, anywhere in the world, she’s there. You can’t tell me that’s not . . . I don’t know, glamorous.”

“I don’t have the face for TV,” I said.

“No, you don’t,” she agreed. “But at least you could be in the profession you wanted.”

“Are you saying you couldn’t?”

“You know why there’s such a shortage of nurses and teachers now?” she said.

“No,” I admitted. “I guess I haven’t thought about it.”

“It’s because, years ago, those were about the only real opportunities for an educated woman. Maybe there were others, like being a social worker, but all in the ‘helping’ professions. When things started to change, started to open up, a lot of women took other roads.”

“And you’re one of the them, right?”

“Yes. I didn’t get an M.B.A. to teach home economics. It wasn’t just the money—although that was a factor—it’s the . . . freedom, I guess.”

“I thought money was tightly regulated. I mean, with the SEC and all. . . .”

“You’re talking about interest rates, and things like that,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if the government regulates money, so long as it doesn’t regulate
making
money. But that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m saying is, if you get good enough at putting together deals, you get to call the shots. Be your own boss. I don’t mean self-employed; I mean a
real
boss. With people under you.

“There’s women who manage major mutual funds now, head up corporations, all kinds of opportunities. But what
I
want isn’t anything like that.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to put things together,” she said. “Not working for anyone, working for
me.
I want to sit back and analyze situations. Then I’d approach all the different parties with a proposal to solve their problems—by using what they already have but don’t understand.”

“Like what? What could they have and not understand, for example?”

“Capabilities in concert,” she said, licking the words like they were rich cream. “Sometimes, assets and liabilities of one company fit those of another one—like a jigsaw puzzle. And if you look at them from an objective distance, you can see how, if they did things together, they could both benefit.”

“You mean, like a merger?”

“Like that, but not
exactly
that,” she said. “Mergers are usually about controlling markets. Or a company looking to expand. I want to specialize in rescue operations. Like leveraged buyouts and third-party ventures from unrealized asset pools and—”

“You know you’ve already lost me, don’t you?” I said.

“I guess,” she giggled. “Don’t mind me. I get so . . . enthusiastic sometimes. I don’t show that side of me at work. They
expect
women to be more emotional than men. Women in my profession, they have to come across as . . . well, not
cold,
exactly. Objective, I guess. That’s the right word.”

“That’s why you dress the way you do? For work, I mean.”

“What’s wrong with the way I dress?”

“Wrong? Nothing. It’s very, uh, tasteful. I just meant, you couldn’t walk in there in a micro-skirt and fishnet stockings and spike heels, right?”

“I don’t
guess,
” she said, chuckling. “Why? Do you like those kind of outfits?”

“On some girls.”

“What kind of girls?”

“Girls who can bring it off.”

“And you think I could?”

“Guaranteed.”

“You’re an angel,” she said. “But I know my flaws. It’s part of . . . objectivity. Looking at things as they really are. My legs aren’t thin enough to show off.”

“You’re nuts,” I told her. “They’re . . . flashy.”

“Stop it!”

“I especially like these,” I said, running the back of my fingernails down her thighs.

“I’m
fat
there,” she said, reaching over to light another cigarette.

“That’s a class thing.”

“What?”

“It’s not . . . objective,” I said, using her language. “Middle-class men have a different image of what a good-looking woman is than working-class men have. And girls pick up on that, real early. Maybe even from their parents.”

“You really think that social class determines what’s physically attractive?” she asked, sounding truly interested.

“Not a doubt in my mind,” I told her. “I’ve been all over, and it never seems to fail. Marketing plays a role, too. Women who were all the rage decades ago would be dismissed as overweight today.”

“Like who?”

“Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, Barbara Eden . . .”

“You’re quite the connoisseur, are you?”

“Just an observant reporter.”

“Uh-huh. And what social class do
you
come from?”

“My family didn’t have much money when I was small,” I told her, weaving the lie. “My dad had to work like an animal. But later he became pretty successful. Good enough to get us a nice home, send me to college. So I guess I ended up middle-class,” I said, then switched to the truth, “but my roots, my earliest experiences and conditioning, that’s what set my standards.”

“And you like what you see?”

“I’d like it even better if . . .” I said, turning her over onto her stomach.

^“
I
told you I was no cook,” she said the next morning, offering me a choice of half a dozen different cold cereals, none of which I’d ever heard of. “There’s plenty of juice, though.”

“We could go out,” I offered.

“If you’re not starving, could we do that later?”

“Sure.”

“What do you want to know?” she said suddenly.

“About . . . ?”

“For your book.”

“Oh. All right, just sit there, I’ll get my notebook.”

My cell phone made its sound.

“Excuse me,” I said. “This could be important.”

I pulled the phone loose, opened it up, said, “Hauser.”

“We’ve got her.” Pepper’s voice.

“Really? Can you be more specific?”

“Not alone, huh, chief?”

“Not even close.”

“The missing woman.”

“The friend of the—?”

“No. The one who went to Iowa.”

“Okay. When you say ‘got’ . . . ?”

“Address, current employment, license number . . . Nobody’s approached her. Yet. But we figured we’d go along with you on this one.”

“Why is that?”

“Mick’s from around there,” she said. “He might be able to help you with the directions.”

“Okay,” I said, not believing a word.

“When can we book it for?”

“I can’t do anything until Monday,” I told her.

“Call me tomorrow,” Pepper told me. And hung up.

“Lucky that didn’t ring last night,” Laura said, as I returned to the table in the kitchen with my notebook.

“Oh, I turned it off,” I lied. “I didn’t want anything to . . . disturb us. I turned it back on while you were in the shower, earlier.”

“That was sweet of you.”

I ducked my head, busied myself with lining up a trio of felt-tipped pens.

“Was John a typical big brother?” I asked when I looked up.

“What do you mean, typical?”

“Well, did he resent you tagging along when he went places, stuff like that?”

“I never went anyplace with him.”

“Yes, I guess that makes sense. Too much difference in your ages. Well, what about—?”

“How far apart do you think we were?” she said, tilting up her chin.

“Well, I know your brother’s age, from the court records. He was born in 1964, so he’d be almost forty now. You’re, what, thirty? Ten years, between kids, that’s a million miles.”

“I’m only four years younger than him,” she said. “I’m going to be thirty-six.”

I made a noise in my throat.

“What?” she said, quickly.

“I . . . just thought you were a lot younger. I only made it thirty, when I guessed, because I thought you might be insulted if I thought you were too young to have the kind of job you do. Oh, hell, I don’t know. I’m not exactly an expert at dealing with women.”

“You seemed to know your way around last night,” she said, smiling.

“You’re confusing skill with motivation,” I said.

She blushed prettily. Opened her mouth, then snapped it shut, as if biting off whatever she was going to say.

“All right,” I said, “let’s try it another way. Was John very protective of you?”

“Like how?”

“I don’t know. Like giving your boyfriends the third degree when they came to the house.”

“No,” she said. “He was never protective.”

“You weren’t close?”

“Not at all.”

“Each had your own lives, huh?”

“Yes. We even went to different schools.”

“Parochial school?” I guessed.

“I did. He didn’t,” she said.

Her answers were getting shorter, more clipped. I shifted gears, asked, “How did your family react when he was first arrested?”

“My mother had been dead for years,” she said. “So she never knew about any of it. And my father had already retired, moved to the Sun Belt. I don’t know if my brother told him what was going on at the time. Maybe he didn’t—my father’s got a bad heart.”

“So that left you.”

“Not really,” she said. “I was just starting to make headway in my job, trying to put enough money together to risk a few little moves of my own. Working eighteen-hour days, sometimes. I was frazzled, a real wreck. And, to be truthful, I never took it seriously.”

“Him being charged with rape?” I asked, allowing just a trace of disbelief into my voice.

“I thought it was some kind of mistake,” she said. “I was so sure I’d get a call from him saying they realized they had the wrong man.”

“Did you go to the trial?”

“I was supposed to,” she said. “I even arranged for some time off. But I got the dates wrong. By the time I showed up, the jury was already out.”

“You were in the courtroom when they came in with the verdict?”

“Yes. It was . . . it was about what you’d expect. A shock.”

“Did they let you speak to him before they took him away?”

“I was too stunned to even move,” she said. “It was like, I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, he was gone.”

“Did you visit him in prison?”

“No. John wrote and asked me not to. He said the visiting conditions were disgusting. The guards were very abusive to women. He didn’t want me there. Besides, he expected to be released any day.”

“He never lost faith?”

“Never once. But, with John, it isn’t ‘faith,’ exactly. It’s more like . . . certainty.”

“You really don’t know much about the case itself, then?” I asked, walking the tightrope.

“Well, I know John didn’t do what he was accused of. What more is there?” she asked, blue eyes on mine.

“The . . . impact thing, remember? Are you saying that your brother’s faith—his certainty—that he’d be vindicated made the whole thing less hard on you? And maybe on your father?”

“I’m sure that’s true,” she said. “Although I never thought about it until right now. Is that common?”

“In a way, it is,” I lied. “For other families I’ve interviewed, it was always the belief that someday the truth would come out that kept them going. I guess the difference is, sometimes the families had an awful lot more faith than the person who had been convicted.”

“But they would be the only ones who
really
knew, isn’t that true?”

“I guess that
is
true,” I acknowledged. “In some of the cases, the evidence was so shaky, or there was such outright corruption, or there was a journalist already on the job, beating the drums so hard, that the public got to share the sense of innocence before the courts ratified it. But in your brother’s case, that wasn’t so. Until he was actually set free, I couldn’t find one line of coverage of the case after the trial was over.”