3 Strange Bedfellows (11 page)

The Hack had used that photograph on Pierce, after all. That's how he forced Pierce to quit running.

But now that the Hack had been killed, Pierce was free to do whatever he wanted.

How convenient for him.

10

After Senator Ducky left, I called Will to give him the latest. He wasn't home, though. Instead I got a cheerful message: "You have reached the answering machine of Will Shmuckler on Saturday, September 11. I'm not home now, but you can find me at Crossgates Mall from four to five, the Latham Citizens Association monthly meeting from six-thirty to eight, and the Red Hook Town Council meeting after eight-thirty. Yes, folks, the Will Shmuckler for Congress Campaign is back on track. All on board!"

It was good to hear
Will sounding upbeat again. Evidently his campaign events were no longer being canceled. I guess people weren't so sure anymore that he was a murderer.

Now if only I could convince the cops.

First, though, I better do the Daddy thing for a while, and try to avoid family chaos. I followed Andrea and the kids to Grandma's house in Lake Luzerne. The road to Lake Luzerne is a winding, two-lane divided highway, and I was pretty confident that if someone were tailing me, I would have spotted him, even with my limited skills.

Grandma's house overlooks a large pond in the middle of a thick spruce forest that totally blocks out any signs of human life. You can sit on Grandma's back porch, gaze down at the pond, and pretend you're living in the sixteenth century. Except for one jarring note. The back porch is where Grandma keeps her computer.

The darn things are everywhere. Pretty soon they'll be attaching them to toilets, so you can log on to AOL while you're taking a Nixon.

Grandma
—a.k.a. Hannah—had just returned from six months of tramping through Asia. She bought herself a Gateway to keep in touch with her new foreign friends via e-mail. Now she and her grandchildren like to sit at the computer, send messages all over the world, and laugh at me for being so ignorant about the Technology Revolution. It's disconcerting—
everyone
understands computers better than I do.

I can't help myself. I still miss Wite-Out. Remember that stuff? If you made a typo, you could just brush on Wite-Out, wait for it to dry, and then type right over it. I used to think Wite-Out was the coolest thing in the world. It had such a nice smell, too.

But who am I to complain? Grandma's computer, and the expertise of my two boys and Grandma herself, enabled me to get Robert Pierce's phone number. I wish computers weren't so darn useful. It would be so much easier to truly hate them.

After two hours of getting no answer at Pierce's house, I finally reached him at 11:30. I hit him with vague threats about "damaging information" that had "come into my possession."

"What kind of 'damaging information'?" he asked, trying to sound sarcastic, but the tremor in his voice betrayed him.

"I'll tell you all about it. At your house. In thirty minutes."

"What? Tonight?"

"Right. Midnight. And just so you know, I'm telling my wife and mother-in-
law I'm going over there." Actually, Andrea and Hannah were already sleeping, but Pierce didn't have to know that.

"Why are you telling
them?"
he asked.

"In case you get the urge to kill me," I said, and hung up.

So as you can see, the background for our late-night rendezvous wasn't all that congenial. The rendezvous itself was no better, though I must admit that listening to Pierce rant and rave at me was educational in a way. I had no idea there were so many synonyms for slimeball. My favorite was "scumsucking toad."

Finally I had enough. I got up from his kitchen chair and said, "Okay, Pierce, if all you're gonna do is call me names and stonewall me, I'll just take this charming little photograph to the cops."

"Go right ahead, you shit," he said. Evidently he'd run out of interesting epithets, and was going back to the tried and true. "That photo is meaningless."

"Then why was the Hack hiding it?"

"I got no idea. Look, you wanna know what's in that envelope Sarafian is giving me?"

"I already do. Money."

"One thousand bucks, that's all. It was a legitimate campaign contribution."

Legitimate campaign contribution
—the identical words that Sarafian used. Had they been on the phone together, polishing their story? Or is "legitimate campaign contribution" a phrase that all scumsucking-toad politicians use?

"If it's so legit, why'd he pay you in cash?"

Pierce made a big show of shrugging. "You don't believe me, call my secretary in the morning. She'll give you a copy of my campaign finance disclosure form. Sarafian is on it, for one grand."

"What campaign was he giving you money for? You weren't running for anything then."

"Some people like to contribute in advance."

I took a couple of steps forward so I was standing over him. "Pierce, you're full of it. Sarafian was bribing you to oppose the Hudson River dredging."

Pierce looked up at me and smirked. "Really? Says who?"

"Okay, pal, answer me this. Why didn't you run for Congress until after the Hack was dead?"

"Personal reasons."

"Yeah, like the Hack was riding your ass about this bribe."

"Prove it."

"You don't get it, you dumb prick," I said. "I don't have to prove it. Right now, with my house getting shot at, the media is hanging on every word I say. All I gotta do is drop a couple of
choice words about you and Sarafian, and you drop a couple of dozen points in the polls. 'Congresswoman Tamarack'—has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

Suddenly Pierce slammed his fist on the kitchen table. "I wasn't bribed
—and I wasn't blackmailed! My not running for Congress wasn't about that!"

"Tell it to the newspapers."

"For Christ's sake, I was fucking Ducky's wife!" Pierce exploded, the veins in his forehead throbbing. Then he grabbed a heavy crystal salt shaker off the table, reared back his arm, and aimed at my head.

Oh God, I thought as I ducked, I hope he remembers about my wife and mother-in-law knowing where I am. But at the last moment he fired the salt shaker at the refrigerator instead. The salt shaker shattered, and the refrigerator got a huge dent.

Well, better the refrigerator than my head.

The sight of the ruined salt shaker seemed to calm Pierce down somewhat. "How could I look Ducky in the eye," he said through gritted teeth, "and ask him for an endorsement? The man had done everything in the world for me, and here I was screwing his wife!"

So Pierce and Ducky were both claiming that Linda slept with Pierce. But then why was Linda's story different?

"Pierce, don't try to play me," I said.

"I'm not—"

"Let's say you
were
sleeping with her. So what? You're still way too ambitious to let mere
morality
stand in the way of your career—"

"Shut up. You just hate me because I'm gonna win the election against your pathetic friend. You don't know jack shit about me."

"So educate me."

"Look, I'm not the ambitious asshole you think I am.
I'm a small-town guy," he said earnestly. If he weren't a politician, I might have thought he was being sincere. "My three kids live a couple of miles from here. Sure, being a congressman sounded good. But there's a State Senate seat opening up next year, and I was planning to run for that instead. That way I can stay near my kids. And I don't need to go through Ducky to run for the State Senate, it's a different process."

"If you're so all-fired sensitive about Ducky," I said, "then how come this week you suddenly asked him to endorse you? After all, you're still having sex with his wife
—"

"No, that's over. I ended it two months ago."

"Your nose is growing. Ducky walked in on you and Linda last week."

Pierce looked startled. "No way. Who told you that?"

"The quack man himself," I said triumphantly.

"But
..."

"But what?"

Pierce blinked. "I don't get it. I really did break up with Linda. And as far as I know, Ducky never found out about us. So why would he make up this story?"

"Someone's
making up a story, that's for damn sure."

Suddenly his eyes lost their baffled look and snapped into focus. "That would explain it, though."

" What would explain
what?"

"Why Ducky is supporting Susan Tamarack instead of me. He must've found out somehow that me and Linda used to sleep together."

My head was spinning. If I believed Linda, she slept with the Hack last week. But Ducky said no, she slept with Pierce last week. Meanwhile Pierce said it wasn't last week, it was two months ago.

This was worse tha
n Peyton Place. I never knew Republicans had so much fun. I stood up.

"I'll be in touch," I said.

Pierce eyed me worriedly. "Where are you going?"

"Home. Hanging around with Republicans is bad for my health."

"You're not going to spread malicious rumors about me, are you?"

"I might," I told him, "and I might not."

When I opened the door to Grandma's at one a.m., the phone was in mid-ring. I ran to it, hoping it hadn't already woken up my stressed-out family.

"Hello?"

"I can't believe it! Jacob Burns, the man himself! I finally found you!"

"Much to my chagrin. What's up, Shmuck? How'd the campaigning go today?"

"Great. I got some awful strange looks, but a lot of support, too. Hey, did you see the Channel 6 late-night news?"

"Can't say I did. Why?"

Like the ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman announcing a to
uchdown, Will shouted,
"He… could... go… all... the… way!"

"Shmuck, don't shout at me, it's one in the morning. What have you been drinking?"

"Just coffee, baby, but in ten days it'll be champagne! Channel 6 took a poll. Pierce: twenty-four percent. The widow: twenty percent. William Shmuckler:
nineteen percent!
We're in striking distance, my man! We're on the move!"

"Wait a second. That doesn't add up to even
close
to a hundred."

"Because we've got undecideds coming out the wazoo. Most of them are non-voters, so screw 'em. And the talking heads all said exactly what
I've
been saying: a lot of the birdbrains who say they're for Pierce or the widow won't actually go to the trouble of writing in their names. So the reality is, I'm probably winning!" There was a pause. "What do you say about that?"

"Nothing. I'm too stunned. I'm in total shock."

Will laughed. "So what exciting stuff have you found out today?"

Good question. I knew a lot more than I did before . . . but what did it all add up to?

"Come on, bro, what you got?" Will asked impatiently. "We need some good dirt on Pierce and the widow to put me over the top."

"Hey, one thing at a time. I'm trying to keep you out of jail, not get you elected."

"What's the difference? You do one, you do the other. Especially if you can prove Pierce or the widow killed him. It's gotta be one of those two."

"What? I thought you were all psyched to pin it on Ducky."

"Yeah, but I've been thinking. The motive is so obvious: either Pierce or Susan killed the Hack so that he—or she—could run for Congress."

"They have other possible motives, too."

"Like what?"

I considered informing Will about the photograph of Pierce. But I didn't trust him to keep that juicy tidbit out of the papers, and I wasn't ready to go public with it yet. "I'll tell you as soon as I can," I said.

"Tell me now," Will said. "Look, you don't know what I'm going through. Before I campaigned today, I had to spend two hours giving hair samples, tissue samples—"

"You're kidding me. They had a warrant for that?"

"No. They just asked me for it, and I said okay."

"You said
what?
Why'd you do that?"

"Why not? I'm innocent. Besides, it's better for my campaign if I can say I'm cooperating fully with the police."

"Look, you really should get a lawyer already. Like I said, I'll be glad to lend you the money—"

"I don't need your money, Jake, I just need a little good news after being treated like a goddamn criminal. Is that so much to ask?"

I sighed. "All right, lay off the Jewish guilt trip. You ready?"

"I'm way past ready."

So I broke down and told Will all about the hidden photograph, and Pierce and Sarafian's explanation that the money was just a "legitimate campaign contribution."

"Legitimate, my ass," Will snorted.

"Hey, it's possible. With campaign finance laws the way they are, how can you tell a legit contribution from a bribe?"

"So what do you plan on doing about it?"

I'd figured that one out already. "I'll see Zzypowski first thing Monday morning, find out if a thousand bucks buys me a few more details on what really went down between Sarafian and Pierce."