To Catch the Moon (7 page)

“True,” he said again. He smiled, or at least
his mouth did. His eyes, now back on her face, remained cold. “All
right, Alicia. You’ll be involved.”

She frowned. Something about that phrasing
made her wary. For all that he wasn’t that smart, Penrose was a
master of parsed language. “What exactly do you mean?”

“You’ll work up the case.” He leaned back in
his chair and linked his hands behind his head, his eyes
triumphant. “But
I
will argue it in court.”

She felt like she’d been stomach-punched.
“
You’ll
argue it in court? When’s the last time you did
that?”

“It’s like riding a bike, Alicia.” His tone
was offhand. “You don’t forget.”

Yes, you do!
she wanted to scream at
him, staring at his stubborn, stupid, self-satisfied face.
You
get rusty, you get nervous, your mind doesn’t work as fast as it
should. It’s like the first time you run after not exercising for
months.
But these were all things Kip Penrose didn’t know. Why?
Because he was never in court. And hadn’t been since he was a
prosecutor himself, years before in Massachusetts.

What a slap in her face. She stood up again,
shaking, stunned, though she realized she shouldn’t be, knowing
what she did about Penrose. She walked away from his desk and
stared sightlessly at the swinging pendulum of his grandfather
clock.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock
. Beating away the precious
minutes and hours of her career. She’d be behind the scenes, doing
all the work and getting none of the glory. While Kip
Penrose—
Kip Penrose!
—used her heavy lifting to score points
with the voters.

“If you don’t like it,” he said to her back,
“you’re free to go elsewhere.”

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you.” It wasn’t a
question.

The damnable truth was, they needed each
other. They were like codependents, or spouses in a bad,
inescapable marriage. She needed him because there was no other
prosecutor’s job in town, and moving out of Salinas, tempting
though that idea often was, would leave her family high and dry. He
needed her because she was his best deputy D.A., which was why she
was standing in his office at that very moment.

And while she was sure that Penrose had his
moments when he would love to get rid of her, he could never fire
her and they both knew it. Ditch his star prosecutor, conviction
rate 90.3 percent and Latina to boot? NOW and the Mexican Bar
Association would be all over him. The press would have a field
day.

“Of course, I’ll handle the media,” he
continued.

“Another enormous surprise.” Somehow she
couldn’t make herself turn and face him. Anger had gotten the
better of her and she could barely speak for it. Times like these
she understood how murderers could commit the crimes they did.
Sometimes her own rage felt like a beast throwing its body against
the bars of a cage.

Part of her wanted to tell Penrose to go
straight to hell. Work up his own case. Fall on his own face. But
another, more rational part—that later she would be glad was still
functioning—thought better of it.

Penrose was a lightweight. He personified the
term. What was to say that when the trial date arrived Alicia
Maldonado wouldn’t be front and center? Penrose cracked under real
pressure, and the pressure of this trial would be enormous. If she
worked up the case, she’d be ready to step in and argue it.

“I’m calling a press conference for tomorrow
morning.” He rose. She was dismissed. “I expect you to be there,
but I don’t expect to hear a peep out of you unless I ask you a
direct question.”

“Forget it. I’ve got a trial starting
tomorrow morning.”

“Get a continuance.”

She shook her head, her heart pounding. He
was so damn cavalier. “Why, Kip? Why should I?” Her voice rose.
“Doesn’t this tell you something? That you’re already scared
shitless you can’t answer questions about the case without me there
to tell you what to say?”

“I’m not worried about a damn thing.” His
voice was harsh. He pointed his finger at her face again. “But you
just be there. For support only. No other reason.”

That comment lifted the entire enterprise
from infuriating to ludicrous. She put her hands on her hips and
laughed. “Kip Penrose, you picked the wrong D.A. for that
assignment.”

At nine the next morning, Kip Penrose was
bending low over the sink in the D.A. office men’s room. His right
hand cupped water, which he then sucked into his mouth; his left
carefully held back his faux Hermes tie so its tip wouldn’t get wet
accidentally in the sink.

Damn!
Why had he left his mouthwash in
his desk drawer? He’d never get rid of the vomit taste this way and
his press conference was due to start this very minute.

Kip raised his head and imagined all those
reporters and camera crews massed on the courthouse steps waiting
for him. For him! This was only the second time in his three years
as D.A. that he’d been able to justify calling a press conference.
And for all he knew he could be holding press conferences every day
this week. A thrill ran through him, followed by yet another wave
of nausea. This was the most exposure he’d ever had. What if he
screwed up? Then
whoosh!
All his hopes and dreams would get
flushed down the toilet.

He grimaced. At the moment he could picture
that all too clearly.

Kip backed away from the sink and grabbed
from the hook on the stall the red-and-green-striped scarf he’d
brought from home special for the press conference. A cheery
holiday touch, plus it gave his face some much needed color. He
draped it just so around his neck, then pulled on his
Burberry-knockoff trench coat, bought at an outlet mall in the wine
country. Apparently it had some defect, but for the life of him he
couldn’t find it. As the final step in his routine, as detailed as
a pilot’s preflight checklist, he smoothed the newly clipped hair
at his temples and tamped down an unruly cowlick.

His ministrations complete, Kip stood back
from the mirror to take in a wider view. As always, his reflection
buoyed him. Even under the harsh fluorescent lights, he thought he
looked pretty damn good for a fifty-three-year-old man. He puffed
with satisfaction. Not one of those reporters would guess that he’d
just upchucked. And every voter at home would think he had the look
of a man destined for bigger and better things.

Privately, Kip wasn’t sure what those things
were. Most often he ricocheted between wanting to be state attorney
general and thinking himself better suited to state comptroller,
but sometimes he got so ambitious he thought,
Why not
governor?
In his mind rose a vision of patriotic
red-white-and-blue signs with PENROSE FOR GOVERNOR! in convincing
block letters, plastered on trees and billboards and rear bumpers
throughout the Great State of California.

Of course, Kip had a marriage problem. Two
too many marriages, to be exact, and voters didn’t always
understand that sort of thing. His third wife was shaping up pretty
well, but One and Two were driving him nuts, coming to him with
their hands out like he was Midas himself. They both spent money
like there was no tomorrow, and neither one could hold a serious
job. One was an interior decorator and the other a caterer. Those
were hobbies, not jobs!

Kip felt himself getting upset, as always
happened when he thought about One and Two, but he forced himself
to calm down. First things first. The press conference. He stood
still and visualized a spectacular performance, reporters having so
many pithy sound bites to choose from that they’d all be forced to
use more than one.
You can do it
, he assured his reflection.
Finally, when he could delay it no longer, he exited the men’s room
to find Rocco Messina outside in the corridor cooling his
heels.

He didn’t like Rocco Messina. Rocco Messina
wanted his job. He didn’t like anybody who wanted his job.

Kip gave Rocco a hearty slap on the back and
made his voice boisterous. “How you doing, Rocco?”

“Fine, how are you? Ready for the
circus?”

“Ready to rock ‘n’ roll!” he crowed. That
couldn’t be further from the truth, but Kip never let facts stand
in the way of a good story. He headed back toward his office but
saw Rocco’s face kind of pucker as he walked into the men’s
room.

Uh-oh. Must still smell in there
.
Well, maybe Rocco would think somebody else did it.

Kip took long, confident strides down the
corridor, as he knew a man of his position should. “Colleen,” he
boomed to his secretary as he passed her desk, not stopping as if
he were very, very busy, “is Alicia in my office?”

“No,” she called, which he could plainly see
a second later when he arrived there. He paused at the threshold,
his purged stomach roiling. Where in the world was she?

He would never tell her this but he would
not, not, go out to that press conference without Alicia. The
chance of one of those reporters asking him something he couldn’t
answer was extremely high. For all that she was an exceedingly
annoying, full-of-herself women’s libber, she was good on her
feet.

And was she smart or what? It scared him
sometimes. Good-looking, too. Thank God she was a woman, and
Hispanic. Otherwise she could be a real rival. Fortunately, what
with the agricultural and Italian communities, Monterey County was
conservative enough that it was nearly impossible for a candidate
like her. Both times she’d run for a judgeship, she’d lost. Of
course, part of her problem was that she was so combative and
opinionated. But now she’d never get the backing to run again, at
least not for his job.

“You finally ready?”

It was Alicia, standing just outside his
office.
Thank God
. “You’re late,” he informed her, making
his voice stern, but she just rolled her eyes and headed for the
exit, not even checking to see that he followed.

Which forced Kip to scramble to get out in
front of her.
Most unseemly
, he thought, his stomach
clutched in yet another knot. Thank God no one who counted had
seen.

*

Milo hadn’t covered a press conference in a
long, long time. Unless it was happening at the White House, State,
or Defense, a presser was a low-prestige event passed over by
network news stars of his caliber.

He sipped the low-fat latte he’d procured at
Starbucks and wondered when this show would get on the road. No
sign of the D.A. and it was already twenty after nine. Milo was one
of several dozen reporters, TV camera crews, and print
photographers massed in front of the Monterey County Courthouse, a
three-story structure built of oatmeal-colored sandblasted concrete
that looked like a mix of New Deal construction and neoclassical
pretensions. Carved heroic heads paid tribute to the Spanish,
Mexicans, and Native Americans who’d once claimed California as
their own. The building took up most of a city block in downtown
Salinas, downtown being distinguished by two traffic lanes in each
direction. Curb lanes on both Alisal and Church Streets were
jam-packed with news vans and ENG trucks, their masts high in the
air.

It was sunny, unlike the prior afternoon, but
hardly warm. Salinas was twenty miles inland and got a lot less
fog. On a day like this, though, Milo still needed his
overcoat.

“Milo Pappas?” A thirty-something guy in a
tie and trench coat held out his hand. He had to be TV. He was too
well dressed to be print. “Jerry Rosenblum, Channel 8.” The local
WBS affiliate.

“Good to meet you, Jerry.” Milo took his
hand. “You guys are being terrific hosts, as always. We really
appreciate it.”

Network people always felt compelled to be
nice to the local affiliate folks, who often were tremendously
helpful when a net crew blew into town. They provided local
knowledge, editing bays at the station, and in this case an ENG
truck. The locals usually felt both one up and one down to the
network. They knew the terrain backward and forward but aired their
reports only in that market, whereas the net reported to the
nation.

Rosenblum nodded. “It’s our pleasure. You
might not have to be around for long, though.”

Milo’s ears perked up. “Why do you say
that?”

“Well”—the reporter looked pleased to know
something Milo Pappas didn’t—“once the D.A. names the suspect today
and we get past the funeral, there won’t be much to cover till the
trial.”

“So Penrose will name the suspect today?”

“So I hear.”

“And it’ll be Treebeard?”

Rosenblum nodded. No news flash there. The
only surprise was that it had taken this long to become
official.

Milo was pleased. Maybe the gods would grant
him his wish to get off the Monterey Peninsula sooner rather than
later. He truly didn’t want to see Joan. It hadn’t been too
difficult to resist her out-of-it invitation from the prior
afternoon, though he couldn’t quite forget it, either. It lingered
at the edge of his brain like the proverbial apple dangling from
Eden’s tree.

It still embarrassed him how snookered he’d
been by Joan back when they’d dated. Of course, he’d been a lot
younger then, and though he wasn’t exactly wise now he was no
longer quite so impressionable.

It wasn’t as if she were exceptionally
beautiful or fascinating. Sure, she was good-looking, but in the
way women with money were good-looking. They were so pampered, so
cared for, so thin and well dressed. They did the most that could
possibly be done with what they were given and ended up looking
pretty damn good.

No, the bottom line was that it was a damn
sexy thing dating American royalty. Certainly his own background,
as the son of a diplomat, imbued him with a certain glamour. But
dating Joan was a stamp of approval from the highest of the high,
from a Rockefeller or a Bush or a Kennedy: a family with money,
fame, power. His acceptance into their magic circle boosted him in
the network-news world as well.