Dismas Hardy: Nothing But The Truth Part 23

'That would be good,' she said. Then, 'Dismas?'

'Yes.'

He waited.

'I love you,' she said.

His knuckles were white on the phone. He knew he was being imprecise. 'Me, too.'

He finished two solid manhattans with Erin and Ed and they talked about the water poisoning and the poor middle-aged hiker from the water temple who had finally died from his injuries. Erin got Hardy a blanket and a pillow and told him he should stay here on the couch and have breakfast with his children in the morning. They were missing him, if he couldn't tell.

He was asleep in ten seconds.

21.

Valens had left Damon Kerry up at his mansion an hour ago and back at his hotel he paced as though he were caged. His suite at the Clift was bigger than some apartments he'd lived in and the wraparound view of San Francisco was expansive, but none of that mattered.

It was now near midnight of what had been the longest and one of the most difficult days of his life. The only thing that made it even remotely worthwhile was today's latest poll that put Damon essentially dead even for Tuesday's election. Technically he was still two points back, but with the pollster's margin for error, the campaign was neck and neck.

Finally, the buzz came and he walked over, looked through the peephole, and pulled open the door.

Thorne cast a last quick look behind him at the hallway, then stepped into the room. 'This is just not smart, Al,' he said in his softest tone as he pushed the door closed, twisted the deadbolt, and connected the chain. Turning, he faced Valens, his expression betraying nothing - a bland smile, rheumy eyes. 'This isn't a good idea. We must not be seen together.'

Valens barely noticed the rebuke. He was too wound up. 'It's midnight, Baxter. n.o.body's looking, trust me. It's just this...' He spread his arms, the enormity of it. '... today.'

Thorne nodded understandingly. 'The election's in three days. This always happens. It's nothing unusual. It might even get worse.'

'I'm not talking about the election. Christ, the election is the good news. I'm talking about a dead man at the bottom of the Pulgas Water Temple and this attorney Hardy going to Bree's place and...'

'Wait, wait.' Thorne held up a palm. 'Why don't we sit down? Do you have anything to drink? You could use a c.o.c.ktail. In fact, a c.o.c.ktail might be just the thing.' He crossed the room to the bar, motioning for Valens to sit on one of the suite's brocaded sofas. 'This is really a remarkable room.' He admired the view for a moment, then turned, asking as if it were an afterthought, 'What does the dead man at the water temple have to do with us?'

The question was an instruction and a threat and it caught Valens flat-footed, no doubt as Thorne had intended. He went back to pulling soft-drink and single-serving liquor bottles from the bar area. 'But speaking of c.o.c.ktails, in the light of all the frenzy around this unfortunate MTBE poisoning, it occurred to me that the candidate could make an extremely dramatic presentation in the next day or two that might put him over the top to stay.'

He'd arranged the bottles and some gla.s.ses on a little tray and brought it over to Valens, placing it on the coffee table, then sitting on the couch kitty-corner. He reached for his inside pocket and extracted a flask.

'What's in that?' Valens asked.

Thorne loved a surprise. For an answer, he smiled and unscrewed the cap, then poured a half inch of the clear liquid into one of the gla.s.ses. Picking it up, he smelled it, then pa.s.sed it across the table. 'You tell me.'

A sniff. 'It's alcohol.'

Another smile, this one beaming. 'Yes it is. Absolutely right. It's ethanol, straight up.' Thorne popped the top on a bottle of orange soda and reached over pouring it into the gla.s.s. 'Bottoms up, Al. Really.'

'You want me to drink this?'

'I think that's the idea. Go on, it won't hurt you.'

But Valens couldn't seem to force himself to move. After a second or two, Thorne said, 'Oh, for heaven's sake,' took the gla.s.s and drained it in a couple of swallows. 'Since when have you been so timid, Al? Did you think I was going to poison you?'

'No, of course not. I just...' He met his employer's eyes. 'I don't know, Baxter. I'm just f.u.c.king worn down.'

Thorne gave him an avuncular pat on the knee. 'A couple more days and it's over. You hang in there and it will all have been worth it. Now' - back to business - 'what do you think about my idea?'

'I'm not sure exactly what it is. Make ethanol c.o.c.ktails?' Suddenly Thorne's face showed some animation. 'Actually, that might be even better. That's just an inspired idea, Al. Really. Reporters will always take a free drink, won't they?' Valens felt some of his own tension break. 'That's been my experience.'

'Exactly. You see, I was thinking of having Damon drink some ethanol - as I just did - at a press briefing. Think of the contrast...' Thorne was getting wound up, although his voice never changed its inflection. 'A few gallons of MTBE finds its way into the water supply and the whole city is shut down, the poisoned water smelling and tasting like turpentine.' He paused briefly and held up his flask. 'While the other additive, the natural additive, ethanol, is so safe you can drink it. In fact, people have been drinking it for ever. I love it,' he said. 'This could be very strong.'

But Valens wasn't so sure. 'If Damon will go for it.'

Thorne's face clouded. 'Why wouldn't he?'

'Because he's careful, Baxter. He's not an idiot. He's never specifically endorsed ethanol. He's just opposed to MTBE.'

'Which if my logic hasn't failed me leaves only ethanol.'

'True.' Valens hated Thorne's attempts to micro-manage - he'd done a d.a.m.n fine job with the campaign, and controlling the candidate, to date. He turned to reason. 'But our strategy, you remember, has always been to let the voters make that leap, which they're doing by themselves. This other is a little... overt, don't you think?'

'Sometimes you need overt.' The voice was eider down; the tone was cold steel.

Here was Thorne's defensiveness, which he'd seen often enough before. It was a signal to Valens that he'd better walk softly, because the truth was that Thorne frightened him badly. He wasn't fooling Valens that he wasn't behind this water poisoning.

Sometimes, though, such as today, people died.

'I agree,' Valens said. 'Sometimes overt is good. So how about I ask Damon, and get his take on it? If he'll go, we go.'

'All right,' Thorne said mildly, 'since that's our only option anyway.' He was pouring a couple of the airline portions of vodka into his gla.s.s. He added an ice cube, topped it off with more orange soda, slid back more comfortably in his chair, and took a long drink. 'Now, about this Hardy fellow. I've done some research. It turns out he may be a bit of a problem.'

This was not what Valens needed just now. He came forward to the first two inches of the couch. 'How's that?'

In his low-key way, Thorne outlined what he'd discovered about Frannie, the grand jury, Ron Beaumont, a little of Hardy's history, and that he was a meddling lawyer who wasn't always loath to get his hands dirty.

'We can only a.s.sume,' he concluded, 'since he b.u.t.tonholed Kerry, that he's made the leap - no pun - from Bree's death to gasoline additives, which is not good news for us. I do wish we could locate Ron.' A sigh. 'We should have acted more quickly, I'm afraid. I blame myself, really. I should have just hacked into her system and deleted the d.a.m.n thing instead of-'

But Valens was shaking his head. He didn't want to get into another discussion with Thorne about the 'instead of.' 'No,' he interrupted, 'she would still have had the hard copy and probably a backup disk. That's what I was trying to get her to give me, to hold her off until after the election.'

'Come on in, Al. Thanks for coming by.'

He took in the incredible penthouse at a glance as he came through the door. He 'd never been here before and the grandness of it surprised him, although maybe it shouldn 't have - everything about Bree Beaumont made an impression. He was, he believed, largely immune to the attractive power of her physical presence but he wasn't fool enough to deny its existence.

She was Damon's girlfriend and as such a campaign factor to control, so he tried not to think of her as a woman. He didn't care that she was a woman. She was b.u.t.ting into his campaign and his business and he didn't like her, period.

But this was the first time he'd ever been alone with her. As she led him through the ornate living room and back to the sitting area near the balcony, he was subliminally aware of the tasteful decorating, the fancy art, the panorama out the windows.

There was a better view close up, however. He couldn't keep his eyes off Bree's perfect a.s.s, which she'd poured into a pair of designer jeans. He'd never before seen her in jeans. Or in a T-s.h.i.+rt with nothing under it. Or barefoot. Her blond hair cascaded halfway down her back. He thought he could encircle her waist with both his hands.

Somehow all of this made him vibrate with a dull anger - that she could walk around like this, around him, and that the vastness between them was so great that it was literally unthinkable for him to have any reaction to her. She was so far above him that he did not exist. This did more than simply p.i.s.s him off.

She was making small talk as she led him back. 'Sorry I'm such a mess,' she said. 'I've been working all afternoon on the computer and lost track of the time.' He was half listening and all the way still looking when she suddenly turned - did she catch where his eyes were? - and motioned to one of the low, upholstered chairs. 'Anyway, just to thank you again for coming. I wouldn't have bothered you but I don't know what to do. I wanted your advice before I burden Damon with anything else.'

'I'll do what I can,' Valens said lamely. He was a few inches under six feet - about Bree's height - and weighed in at near two hundred pounds. Brown hair, heavy shadow, under-starched white s.h.i.+rt and rack suit. His tongue wouldn't work. 'I appreciate your thinking of me.'

Perhaps sensing his reaction to her, she stood a moment, awkwardly, then motioned to one of the chairs. 'Do you want to have a seat? Can I get you something to drink? I've got anything really.'

'Yeah, I'll take a beer, thanks.'

He watched her again, then forced himself to look out over the balcony to the city beyond. In a heartbeat, she was back with a bottle of some foreign beer, a chilled Pilsner gla.s.s, and a plastic bottle of Evian.

Valens thanked her politely. 'This is a nice place,' he said, pouring.

She was uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the cap on the water bottle and she stopped, her face turning wistful. 'Yes. Though I'm afraid it looks like we're going to have to let it go pretty soon. But I shouldn't complain - it's been very nice, more than we ever thought we'd...' She stopped. 'The upkeep s just too much. And anyway, Ron and I - my husband? - well, you know.'

'He's not around, is he?'

She shook her head. 'No. He and the kids went... well, it doesn 't matter. They're out now.'

Valens took a deep draught, then tried to ask it gently. It wouldn't do him any good to show anything. 'So is this about him?'

The question seemed to surprise her. 'No. Nothing about that really.'

He waited.

She looked out over his shoulder, absently bringing the water bottle to her lips. 'I've been doing a lot of soul-searching lately, Al. And also a lot of research.'

'OK.'

She brushed some hair away from her face. 'You know, ever since Damon got me to start questioning my a.s.sumptions on my work on the petroleum side, looking in different directions as he'd say, it's realty been... I guess you'd say an education.'

Valens nodded.

'Which is funny, given that I'm considered an expert on all of these issues.'

A shrug and an attempt to smile. 'Well, you saw the light, that's all.'

But she shook her head. 'I don't know what I saw really. I think, other than just being so hurt that I'd been misled by people I trusted and mad at myself for being so stupid - I mean. Al, I am not stupid - anything else, OK, just not stupid.'

'No,' Valens said, trying to keep it light, 'we could go with not stupid!

But the levity went by her. Impatiently, she brushed her hair away again. 'But even more, other than that, Damon got me back to why I started doing all this... my work, I mean... in the first place!

'Which was?'

She stopped. 'This will sound stupid.'

Valens shook his head. 'No, we've agreed we're not going with stupid. So why'd you start working in the first place?'

'I wanted to do good! She let out a breath in a whoosh. 'OK, there. I've said it.'

'OK.' Big deal, he thought. 'So you wanted to do good?'

'And I did, too. I did what I set out to do, with MTBE. Do you know how great that stuff works cleaning up the air, Al? It cuts toxic emissions down to almost nothing. You go out to Pasadena now in August and you can see the mountains. Or even out there.' She pointed to the window. 'You can see it! It has made the world cleaner, do you realize that? Do you see what an incredible achievement that was?'

Now she was all wound up and had to stand to walk off some of it. Over to the balcony doors, pulling them open, letting in a blast of cool air. It seemed to calm her after a moment, and she turned around to face him again.

'Anyway, in spite of its bad press now, the point is that it really worked, and I was part of it, a big part of it. The EPA loved it, everybody loved it. Can you understand how invested I was in it? How when the complaints started to appear, I didn't want to look? I couldn't look.'

'Anybody could understand that,' Al said, although he wasn't sure that he could. 'That was natural.'

'It was,' she agreed. 'It was so natural.' Sighing, she came back to the chair across from him and sat in it, their knees almost touching. 'Anyway,' she said, 'then I saw it, what I was doing, because of Damon.'

'And you did right.'

'Well, as far as it went.'

Valens c.o.c.ked his head. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean I guess I was angry. I'd been made to look like a fool and I didn't want it to happen again. I realized that Damon was starting to look like he was pus.h.i.+ng for ethanol, even if he wasn't really doing it directly, and I wasn't positive he wanted to go in that direction, either.'

For Valens, this was the worst possible news. His candidate wasn't a scientist - he didn't need to know the details. All he needed to know was that MTBE polluted the groundwater and ethanol didn't. Therefore ethanol was better. But he couldn't show his concern. Instead, he stalled for a minute with his beer, then smiled. 'Well, Bree, as you say, he's never made ethanol part of his platform.'

'Except it's there. You know it is, Al.'

'And is that so bad?'

'Well, it's not a great fuel. It's expensive to make, it's not as efficient...'

He had to cut her off. 'But it's no danger in groundwater, and does make gas burn cleaner, right?'

Bree grimaced, hesitated.

'What? Tell me.'

'We don't need either of them. The whole additive industry is basically just one giant, greedy scam. The oil companies, as we know, are making billions on MTBE. But that's not all. Have you ever heard of SKO, the farming conglomerate?'

Valens felt his head go light. 'Of course.'

'Well, it's making zillions, too, in subsidies for ethanol. They can't make the stuff profitably, but somehow they've convinced the government that it's in the national interest that we keep making it.'

'Maybe it is. Maybe-'

But she cut him off. 'No. No, it's not, Al. Listen to this. Did you know that it takes more energy to produce ethanol than the stuff generates as a fuel?'