Silencer (14 page)

‘You wouldn't,' he said.

‘Oh, try me.'

‘You'd be jeopardizing criminal prosecutions all over the country, Amanda. A story like that –'

‘A story like that is hair-raising, Lew,' she said.

‘A story like that is going to make potential witnesses think long and hard about testifying. You're not giving this proper thought, Amanda.'

‘
Au
contraire.
'

‘You're obsessing over Isabel Sanchez. This is a personal thing and it's also blackmail.'

‘It takes what it takes, Lew. Get back to me before the end of the day. That's an ultimatum. I'll be waiting.'

Rhees looked up from his coffee. ‘Hardball,' he said, with a sharp little note in his voice.

‘What else works?' she asked.

She poured coffee. She felt a healthy vibrancy run through her like the struck strings of a zither. ‘Goddam. I can't tell you how satisfying that was.'

‘You think it's going to achieve anything?' Rhees asked.

‘We'll see.' She clasped her hands round her cup and listened to the rain. It pattered on the roof, slinked over downpipes, stirred the grass. The doorbell rang. The sound made her jump. Rhees went to answer it. She heard him open the front door and after a couple of minutes he came back. ‘Some guy selling magazine subscriptions,' he said. ‘I felt sorry for him in this rain.'

‘They count on your sympathy,' she said.

Rhees smiled. ‘I told him I'd take
Sports Illustrated.
'

‘You don't like sports.'

‘The poor bastard was dripping. Besides, there's always the swimsuit issue. In any case, he didn't have the
New York Review of Books
. So what was I to do?'

‘You'd give your last dime to any guy rattling a tin cup.'

‘It's called charity,' Rhees said.

She paced the room. She wondered if Bascombe had telephoned Arlington, if she'd made him sweat enough to go that far.

The telephone rang. She reached for it at once. It was her father.

‘I tried the cabin,' he said. ‘Obviously you haven't gone back yet.'

‘Not yet,' she said.

‘I go out of town one night and I come back and there you are mentioned in the newspaper. You didn't say anything to me about this corpse.'

‘Dad, I'm waiting for a call. I'm going to hang up and I'll get back to you.'

‘You're back in business again, right? That's what I smell.'

‘No, I'm not back in business. I'm only doing what I think I have to.'

‘What is it with you? You got an aversion to peace and quiet? If I was Rhees, I'd stick you in the trunk of the car and drive you back to the cabin immediately and lock you there until you're thinking halfway straight. What's wrong with him anyway? You wrap him round your little finger like –'

‘I'm hanging up, I'll call you back.'

‘Don't you dare hang up on me, Amanda.'

She set the receiver down. She swept a lock of hair from her forehead. In a way, she liked the feeling of hanging up on Morgan, who longed to think she needed him
and
his money. The telephone rang again. This time it was Bascombe.

‘Listen carefully,' he said, ‘this is the deal.'

25

By early afternoon Dansk had almost finished going through the microfiche material in the newspaper morgue. He zoomed in on a photograph of Amanda taken outside a courtroom. Dressed in a dark suit with a double-breasted jacket, she was smiling into the camera. He gazed into her face. Was that fatigue he saw there? Or relief? He couldn't decipher the expression.

The caption read,
SANCHEZ PROSECUTOR RESIGNS
.

He skimmed over the story. ‘Ms Scholes said she needed time for her personal life … looking forward to a vacation but gave no indication of where she plans to spend it … delighted the prolonged Sanchez case is finally over and that justice has been served.'

Justice served, and amen.

Behind Amanda in the photograph was a man identified as Lieutenant William Drumm. He had small slitted eyes and a benign smile. He was quoted as saying that the resignation of Special Prosecutor Scholes was a blow to the law-enforcement community. Amanda and the plump cop, a mutual admiration society.

The article also mentioned that Amanda's successor was a guy called Dominic Concannon, a graduate of Columbia. Concannon said that Amanda Scholes had set very high standards, she was a hard act to follow.

She'd had a fair amount of press in her time, Dansk thought. Magazine profiles, newspapers, mainly in-State publications, but also a couple of nationals. She had views on
big matters
. Capital punishment (against in some instances, for in others – cop-killers, child-murderers). Abortion (pro-choice). She was critical of the legal profession, the usual gripes: too many frivolous lawsuits, too many ambulance-chasers, too many deals cut in back rooms.

He left the building, stepped out into the rain, sat in his car, took out his little notebook and leafed through it. This Amanda was one determined woman. She sailed into battle with cannons blazing. In court she harried defence witnesses, squabbled with opposing attorneys, took flak from the bench. Gutsy, and brainy, give her that.

Then out of the blue she'd had enough. Abracadabra, gone. He wondered what lay behind this decision. Maybe she realized she'd chosen a career that didn't fulfil her, which wasn't a decision she'd make lightly. He had the feeling she didn't go into things in a superficial way, she'd figure the angles first, which was maybe too bad – superficial he could deal with.

He flicked the pages of his notebook to the biographical stuff. Father named Morgan Scholes, widower, rich business shark. Amanda had gone to law school in Los Angeles. She'd never married. Probably too busy being Ms Prosecutor, building the career, climbing the glory ladder. The fucking problem with microfiching your way into somebody's life was how you didn't get the full story, only the margins, and they were never satisfying.

For instance, did she have close friends? Old pals from college? People she'd confide in? People she'd turn to in an emergency? A support group? He wrote, ‘friends?' in his notebook.

He gazed out at the rain streaming across the parking-lot. No sun, the city grim, passing cars making spray. Typical, you're in the desert and it rains. He drove back to his hotel, left his car in the underground parking. McTell was waiting in reception. They went inside the empty bar and Dansk ordered a 7-Up. McTell asked for a Coors.

He hunched across the table. ‘The guy's called John Rhees,' he said. ‘He's a professor. Teaches college here. Poetry or something.'

She'd want somebody smart, Dansk thought. ‘Anything else?' he asked.

‘According to this busybody neighbour I talked with, they've been living in a cabin up near Flagstaff past few weeks. Seems she was sick or something.'

Sick. Dansk wondered about that. Sick didn't tell you much. He settled back in his chair. ‘You've been busy, Eddie.'

‘Nice guy Rhees,' McTell said.

‘Don't tell me. You talked to him.'

‘A few minutes.'

Dansk asked, ‘What did you say, you were from the electric company and had to read his meter?'

‘Trade secret, Anthony.'

‘Did you see the woman?'

‘Uh-huh.' McTell stared inside his drink. ‘Whaddya think, Anthony? We gonna have to do surgery or what?'

Dansk said nothing. Surgery, he thought. Arteries ruptured, blood pumping.

‘We can't like hang out here for ever,' McTell said.

‘We like hang out until I say otherwise, McTell.'

McTell blew out his cheeks and looked sullen, resembling a puffer-fish in a bad humour.

Dansk pushed his chair back from the table. He thought about the French restaurant last night, the way Amanda and Rhees had held hands across the table. He was aware of a bleak little blue-yellow gas flame of loneliness inside his head. He recalled how she'd leaned across the table and dabbed Rhees's lips with her napkin, the concern that was maternal and sexy at the same time. Concealed behind a vase of carnations, Dansk had picked at his
salade niçoise
without any enjoyment.

He'd followed Rhees inside the men's room at one point and stood at the urinal next to him. In the strained manner of conversations conducted between strangers pissing side by side, Dansk had said, ‘It's always a good sign when a restaurant has a spotless toilet.'

Rhees, zipping up, had agreed. Out of casual interest, Dansk had glanced very quickly at Rhees's flaccid penis – circumcized, mid-sized number, nothing to write home about – then he'd washed his hands and held them under the hot-air dryer.

Dansk said, ‘Sanitary. Better than towels.'

Rhees said, ‘Those gadgets don't dry as well as towels.'

‘Towels carry germs,' Dansk had remarked.

Rhees had said, ‘I guess it's down to personal preference,' and smiled affably, the smile of a man who knows his love is waiting for his return. Dansk had pictured this lean man with the easy smile fucking Amanda. He'd imagined Amanda's spread thighs and pubic shadows and moonlight on a window and Rhees saying he loved her, and he wondered what that was like, living your life as if you belonged inside it.

Dansk stood up now. Remembering Rhees depressed him. ‘I think I'll rack out for a while.'

McTell said, ‘Later.'

Dansk took the elevator up to his room. He hung the ‘Do Not Disturb' sign on the handle and closed the door. He started to take off his jacket, then realized he wasn't alone. The man who sat on the bed wore a long black overcoat and a black cashmere beret. His breathing was shallow and laboured.

Dansk didn't move, didn't say anything. He was surprised by the guy's appearance, conscious of turbulence in his head. He had his jacket halfway off, an empty arm dangled at his side.

The man covered his mouth with a black-gloved hand and coughed a couple of times. His eyes were bloodshot and runny and, Dansk thought, disgusting.

The man opened his briefcase. He produced a thick wad of crisp banknotes, set it on the bedside table and said, ‘Payroll time for your guys, Anthony.'

26

She entered the Biltmore at 10 p.m.
It's cloak and dagger
, Bascombe had said on the phone.
It's the only way they'll agree. Be punctual
.

The only way, she thought. What was wrong with a little openness now and again? They were infatuated with secrecy. They liked nocturnal meetings and whispered conversations in secure rooms.

She surveyed the reception area. This place, all the rage in the years after Frank Lloyd Wright had designed it, was past its shelf-date. Women with bad face-lifts dined here, balancing awkwardly on high heels and hanging on to the arms of silver-haired men who looked like traumatized bankers or golfers from the age of knickerbockers. There was the perfume of old money and the musty smell of quiet power. It was the kind of place where her father occasionally dined.

Amanda approached the desk. She asked a clerk for the key to room 247, as she'd been instructed.
Do it exactly the way you're told
, Bascombe had said. The clerk was supercilious. He pushed the key towards Amanda as if he thought she was here for the purpose of an illicit assignation. She wondered if her clothes were suspect. The knee-length black skirt and matching jacket didn't strike her as the garb of a working-girl. You couldn't tell, she supposed.

She took the key and walked towards the stairs. On her way up she encountered a party of old dowagers chattering among themselves like so many fluttery birds descending in a wave of chiffon and the choking smell of Chanel No. 5. Amanda sidestepped, let them creak past her on their way down, then continued up.

She clutched the key in her warm hand.
Go into the room. Somebody will meet you there
. For an uneasy moment she suspected some kind of trick or trap. It was groundless, a case of nerves. She was going to have a quiet word with a grey-faced bureaucrat, that was all, somebody who'd allay her fears with a few appropriate phrases and maybe a lie or two thrown in for good measure. Somebody who'd tell her that the situation had been investigated and the repairs made, the holes sealed, it couldn't happen again. Sorry about Isabel Sanchez, by the way.

But still.

She walked down the corridor, searching for the room number. She reached it, paused, then kept walking. This affliction of nerves was downright stupid, so why didn't she just turn around, slip the key in the door and enter the goddam room? This is what you wanted, she thought. This is what you asked for.

She walked back. She looked at the key a moment, then she opened the door. She stepped inside the room. It was empty. She checked the bathroom, also empty. She went to the window and gazed out, seeing falling rain caught in the lamplight on the lawn. Somewhere a band had begun to play, a tinny sound heavy on drums, music for people who wanted to shuffle through a geriatric foxtrot.

OK, so the Program representative was late, flight delayed, traffic jam, all kinds of reasons. She sat down in front of the dressing-table and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. A little make-up, a touch around the eyes, the lashes, the lightest of lipstick, hair sensibly brushed and in place. She'd wanted to look down-to-business serious, the kind of person who wouldn't be swayed by platitudes and excuses.

She heard a key turn in the lock and the door opened. The man who entered the room came across the floor towards her. ‘Amanda Scholes?' he asked.

She noticed tiny spots of rain in his hair. He reached inside his raincoat and said, ‘Let me show you some ID.'

‘Sure,' she said.

He handed her a laminated badge. She saw the words ‘Department of Justice' and the guy's photograph and a thumb-print and a name typed just beneath it: ‘Anthony Dansk.'