Dismas Hardy: Nothing But The Truth Part 31

'Then it was Kerry.'

'Well, s.h.i.+t,' Ghattas responded. 'Very s.h.i.+t.'

'My thought exactly, Paul. Good work. And thanks for coming down tonight. It was a big help. You need a lift home?'

'No. I call my wife. Ten minutes, she's here.' He nodded and was gone.

Silence reigned again and Hardy waited. Glitsky chewed the inside of his cheek.

'You're probably remembering right now that it was me who picked up that gla.s.s,' Hardy said.

27.

Jim Pierce sat in the pilot's seat on the flying bridge of his yacht, bundled against the weather. He was drinking rum neat from a metal cup and sucking on the b.u.t.t of a Partagas cigar. The craft was plugged into the marina's power source, and he had the small television going, although he wasn't faced toward it - it was background noise, that was all. Laugh track. A brisk sea wind carried a load of wetness in through the open winds.h.i.+eld.

He felt a movement in the boat, but didn't turn.

'Do you know what time it is?'

His wife was a vision as usual. Even more so now, as she was flushed from the cold and the slight exertion to get out to the boat. Her hair had gathered the fine drizzle and, backlit, turned it into a halo. 'I would guess around nine o'clock,' he said evenly.

'What were you waiting for out here?'

'You to come and get me? And look, now you have.'

'The police have been around again.'

'Well, when it rains, it pours. What did they want this time?'

'There's been another murder apparently. A policeman.'

'And they came to see me?'

'Apparently he was related somehow to Bree.'

Finally, he met his wife's eyes. 'Well, I'm not related to Bree.' He took a pull of his liquor.

'Don't get hostile with me, Jim. Please. Where have you been?'

He kept looking at her. 'Right here,' he said. 'I told you. Waiting for you to come and get me.'

'And you came down here last night?'

He nodded. 'You weren't home from your party. I got stir crazy. What did they want?'

She threw a glance behind her as if worried that someone would hear. Then back to him. 'They wanted to know where you were. I told them. Didn't they come by here?'

He pointed with his cigar in the direction of the water. 'I was out.'

'In this fog?'

He shrugged. 'Living dangerously. What difference does it make? So what did you do all day?'

'I was home until noon, waiting for you to get back. Then I had lunch with my mother and brother. Then there was the Library do - the Sponsors' Dinner?'

Jim Pierce slapped at his forehead in mock consternation. 'That was tonight? And I missed it?' He tossed her a dismissive look. 'See,' he said, 'you had a fine time without me.'

'Everyone wondered where you were. They said they missed you.'

'I'm sure they did. And I them.'

She had her arms crossed, and now leaned back against the railing. 'I don't know why you're so cruel, Jim. I don't know when that started.'

He took a beat, carefully lifted his metal cup, and took a slow sip. 'Oh, I think you can figure it out. You get rejected enough, it makes you bitter. Some people, they get bitter, they take it out by being cruel.'

'I never rejected you.'

A stab of staccato laughter. No, he thought, you just made it impossible to ask anymore. But he said, 'That's right. It was me.'

A long, dead silence.

One of the channel buoys at the mouth of the marina chimed deeply, followed almost immediately by the forlorn moan of a foghorn. Jim Pierce tossed his cigar b.u.t.t into the bay and reached over to flick off the television.

His wife looked as though she were waiting for him to say something, so he obliged her. 'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'Nothing matters.'

'You can't do this!' Valens was actually near to screaming. He had pulled Damon Kerry out on to the roof of whatever G.o.ddam hotel they were in after his talk to whatever G.o.ddam group it was. 'You can't do this with two days to go! You're alienating people, don't you understand? And you can't do that and win.'

'I'm being myself,' Kerry said. 'I've never lost an election and I've been myself in each one.'

'Yeah, but Damon, you've never run for governor before! This is not a city supervisor job. This is high office, and that's why I'm on board, remember? I do this. I keep candidates from being themselves, especially with forty-eight hours to go. I'll tell you what - you want to be yourself, be yourself on Wednesday.' He paced off a few steps and swore succinctly.

Kerry came up behind him. 'I am not alienating my electorate. I'm trying to reach people, to tell the truth. People respond to that, to me.'

'No,' Valens said. He turned around, despising the law of politics that the tall guy always wins. Kerry had him by half a foot, and this close, Valens had to look up at him. But he was going to say his piece - uphill, downhill, sideways - and Kerry was going to have to hear. 'No no no. Listen to me carefully. You are not trying to reach people or tell the truth or be yourself or any of that. You are trying to get yourself elected. That's all you're trying to do right now. And we're running behind all day, missing meetings, you're deviating from the script...'

'There's no script. There's-'

'No, Damon. The script is all that's left at this point. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Smile, smile, smile. And keep moving, keep moving, don't miss an opportunity to repeat repeat repeat.'

'Except we missed a few this morning, didn't we, Al? And why was that? Because you were late picking me up.'

'You overslept, Damon.'

'I depend on you, Al. I was exhausted and I'm getting sick. And what about you? The job of the campaign manager is get the candidate where he needs to be. That's what he does. He doesn't keep the candidate from being himself.' He put a couple of fingers up to his forehead. 'I really am getting sick,' he said. 'I've been sick for weeks.'

Valens was at the edge of the roof. Below him, he was aware of the gauzy glow of the city's lights through the fog. He'd been in similar situations in nearly every election with which he'd been involved - the schoolgirl squabbling during the last leg of a campaign.

Damon Kerry undoubtedly was feeling sick, and Valens didn't really blame him. The pace was grueling, the pressures unrelenting. Valens might be frustrated and worried in his own right, but for the sake of the election, it was time to calm the waters. 'Damon,' he said gently, 'we've got one more day and tomorrow starts early. Why don't we get you back home, to get a good night's rest if you can? We're close now. We can still pull this out.'

'It's not just the election.' Kerry was shaking his head. 'You don't know, Al.'

'Yes I do, Damon, I really do. And what I know is that it is just the election.'

But Kerry wasn't on that page. 'All I know is that if I hadn't started down this path, Bree would still be alive. If she hadn't...' He trailed off.

But they had covered this ground a hundred times, most often late at night when Kerry's defenses were down. Valens laid an avuncular hand up on his candidate's shoulder. 'She did, though.' He patted the shoulder gently to demonstrate his commiseration. 'Let's get you home, get some rest,' he said. 'It'll look better in the morning.'

Thorne was at the kitchen table in his apartment halfway up n.o.b Hill, putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches on a memorandum he'd print up tomorrow regarding the oil companies' ten point eight million dollars in contributions to the country's political campaigns this year. In the memo, he noted that Damon Kerry had not accepted one dime from this source. Thorne thought that if he got the news release distributed early enough in the day, it would certainly get into some of Tuesday's papers, perhaps before many people had gone to the polls, and might even make a few late-breaking news shows looking for a filler by tomorrow night.

Every little bit helped, he believed, especially in light of the continuing MTBE poisoning story which was gratifyingly ubiquitous. Kerry's opposition to big oil was going to play very well, possibly right up through election day.

He proofread his final copy, then placed the papers in his briefcase, opened a cold beer, and poured it into a chilled Pilsner gla.s.s. Then he went into his living room and turned on the television.

The late evening news didn't let him down. It led off with the continuing followup on the Pulgas Water Temple story. The Water District had taken samples in the city's drinking water and found levels of MTBE that were lower than the EPA standards, and so technically 'safe.' But the levels were still deemed 'detectable,' and residents were advised to 'use caution.'

Thorne smiled at the language, and at the hysterical reaction of the public that the media play nearly guaranteed. MTBE was bad stuff, all right - an aspirin's worth in an Olympic-sized swimming pool was toxic - but ten or fifteen gallons in a reservoir the size of Crystal Springs wasn't going to make anybody sick, not immediately anyway. Nevertheless, over thirty people had sought medical attention in emergency rooms all over the city after drinking the water yesterday and this morning.

On-the-street interviews indicated that nearly everyone tasted 'something funny' in the water, a turpentine taste.

Thorne had made a point of drinking a few gla.s.ses in the course of the day and had tasted nothing.

There was a nice clip of several dozen dead trout floating near the dump spot. The location of this school of fish - where the concentration of MTBE was several million times greater than it was at the pumping station for the city's water supply - was simple luck, but Thorne found it particularly pleasing. It gave the impression that the whole lake had been polluted.

Kerry got a couple of great sound bites calling for an immediate moratorium on MTBE use, and this was echoed by one of the state's senators and the mayor, G.o.d bless him, who had even gone further. 'There is no reason to tolerate even for one more moment this dangerous and insoluble toxin in our gasoline where there is an environmentally safe and effective subst.i.tute so readily available, and by this I mean ethanol.'

Kerry's opponent, by contrast, spoke from a location in Orange County and sounded to Thorne like an idiot. 'It is not MTBE that has caused this terrible crisis any more than it is guns that kill people. People kill people, and people - criminals - have poisoned the San Francisco water supply. Gasoline without any additives would have produced the same effect, and no one is talking about making gasoline illegal.'

Police had no clues as to the ident.i.ty of the individuals or the location of the headquarters of the Clean Earth Alliance, who claimed responsibility for the act, although when found, they would be charged with the murder of 53-year-old...

Thorne hit the mute b.u.t.ton, sat back, and enjoyed a sip of his beer. All in all, he had to consider this a resounding triumph. There was, of course, no Clean Earth Alliance. His operatives had scattered to the four winds. Life was good.

But his smile faded with the new image on the screen - the house - and he reached again for the remote, bringing up the sound. '... determined that the cause of the fire was arson.'

The serious male anchor nodded sagely. 'What makes this so interesting, Karen, is that this house was the home of Frannie Hardy, wasn't it? The woman who is still in jail for refusing to testify regarding the husband of Bree Beaumont, the expert on gasoline additives who was murdered nearly a month ago.'

'That's right, Bill.' The camera closed in on Karen. 'It's hard to believe that there is no connection whatever between Bree Beaumont's murder, the MTBE poisoning at the Pulgas Temple, and the arson this morning.'

Thorne hit the mute again, his frown p.r.o.nounced by now. Last night he had been both wired and a little drunk; he'd had perfect cover in the thick fog. He was also feeling G.o.dlike after the Pulgas thing had gone so well.

When would he learn? You might want it and love every minute of it, but you didn't do things yourself. You hired experts to take care of operations. That was the safe way. Otherwise it was you who got interrupted, who had to improvise, who perhaps left physical evidence at the scene.

He sat, scowling, ruminating over the possibility that he had personally exposed himself now, perhaps even gotten himself implicated with Bree Beaumont, and that had never been his intention. He tried to remember if he'd known that Hardy's wife was the blasted woman in jail. He just couldn't dredge it up - not that it mattered now.

And the last problem, maybe the biggest problem, with s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g things up yourself was then sometimes you had to fix them yourself.

28.

Sunday night, and Glitsky sprung Frannie again for a couple of hours. It was going to be the last chance to get away with that before the work week began, and she considered any single second outside of her cell well worth the trouble.

They were all still pretending that Frannie was going to be free on Tuesday, but Hardy, at least, knew it might not be so simple.

If Scott Randall didn't cooperate, if Sharron Pratt didn't relent under the mounting criticism in the press, if Frannie discovered another reason why she couldn't reveal what Ron had told her - for example, if Ron simply reneged on releasing her from her promise - any of these could and would prolong the nightmare.

And in any event, Hardy was going to have to get a hearing scheduled to vacate the contempt charge. He was all but certain that this would not be a cake walk.

For two hours, Glitsky fielded calls from the dispatcher trying to get a fix on Damon Kerry's location, provided information on the day's events to the police beat reporter, and organized his utilization coefficients. Hardy and Frannie were together alone in the interrogation room off the homicide detail, the shades drawn and the door locked by a chair propped up under the doork.n.o.b.

Hardy made up an excuse so he could stop by his car and pick up the gun. He had no plans to go unarmed until this had pa.s.sed. He knew Glitsky would disapprove - he might get himself in big trouble, hurt someone, and wind up on trial himself. But he took solace in the old saying, 'Better tried by twelve than carried by six.'

Then they took Glitsky's car and parked across the street from Kerry's house. The plan was to wait until the limo pulled away so they'd get the candidate alone. But the limo had barely stopped when a short, stocky form emerged and began crossing the street toward them.

'That's Valens,' Hardy said.

Glitsky moved, opening the driver's door, gun drawn. 'Stop right there,' he ordered, 'right now. Police.'

'Police? Jesus Christ! What are you doing here?'

Hardy opened his own door and got out, but let the car remain between him and the others. He felt for his gun, riding in the small of his back, hidden under his jacket.

'Hey.' Valens held his hands out in front of him. The fog had finally lifted somewhat, and the voices seemed to carry like the ping of crystal. 'I'm coming over to see who you are, OK? Two guys, dark car, middle of the night, get it?'

Glitsky was advancing toward the man. 'We get it. Are you Al Valens? Is that Damon Kerry's car?'

Valens nodded. 'Yeah. And he's in it, trying to sleep. He's the Governor of California in about two days, OK?'

'Sure,' Glitsky responded. 'But right now today I'm Lieutenant Abe Glitsky and I'm the head of homicide. I'd like to have a few words with Mr Kerry.'

'Not possible.' Valens shook his head emphatically. 'The man has been running all day. He's got twenty appearances tomorrow. He's not available.'

Glitsky allowed himself a tight smile. He spoke in a conversational tone. 'I'm not asking.' He started for the limo.

But Valens wasn't giving up that easily. He side-stepped into the lieutenant's path. 'You got a warrant? I want to see a warrant.'