3 Strange Bedfellows (14 page)

As I climbed up the Million-Dollar Staircase to the third floor and walked down the corridor past all the marble sculptures and gilt-
framed portraits of dead politicians, I wondered if the Hack's old office would be open. Would the blonde bombshell still be at her desk, even though her old boss was dead and her new boss was yet to be named?

The office, as it turned out, was locked. When I knocked on the door, no one answered.

Well, hell, that's what AAA cards were for. I took mine out of my wallet and waited for a break in the pedestrian hallway traffic, then set to work.

The time I'd put in training Andrea had been well spent. My card went through that fifty-year-old lock like a knife through butter. I opened the door, stepped inside
—

And gasped.
Holy tamale
.

My gasp gave way to a grin. Linda Medwick was
in flagrante delicto
—I believe that's the expression—on the office desk with none other than Robert Pierce.

Wow. I'd now barged in on one dead body and two hot sex scenes in less than twenty-four hours. That must be some kind of record.

Watching these two paramours reminded me that having sex on top of a desk had long been a special fantasy of mine. My first college girlfriend once promised that for my twentieth birthday we'd make love on the front desk in the science lecture hall. But tragically, we broke up two weeks before my birthday. I should chat with Andrea about this unfulfilled fantasy—

Linda rather rudely broke int
o my thoughts. "Would you
mind?”
she asked, sounding annoyed but not the least bit embarrassed. I had to admire her coolness. I guess those generous endowments of hers, now strutting their stuff in full view, had also endowed her with generous self-esteem—at least as regards her impact on men.

For his part, though, Pierce looked like he wanted to do the bug thing and crawl under a rug. His "private parts," as Bernie would call them, were shrinking right before my very eyes.

"No, I don't mind," I said to Linda, feigning casualness. "I'll look the other way while you get yourselves together."

I turned around and folded my arms as, behind me, Linda screeched, "Kindly have the
decency
to
leave!”

"Sorry, I'm not going anywhere," I said. "So forget about cooking up a cover story together. I'll talk to you alone, then I'll talk to
him
alone."

Naked and shrunk
en though he was, Pierce had regained some of his dignity. "I refuse to discuss anything with you."

The door to the hallway was still open. Three guys in navy blue sport jackets were wandering by. "Excuse me, sirs," I called out. "There's something I'd like to show you in Mr. Tamarack's office."

The men hesitated, then one of them gave an amused half-grin and said, "Sure." They headed my way. Little did they know the thrill they were in for.

But Linda yelled out, "All right! We'll talk!"

So I barred the doorway to the three men. "Sorry, fellas. Change of plans," I said, as I shut the door on them.

Linda and Pierce put their clothes back on. I told Pierce to leave the office for fifteen minutes, then come back.

"You can't order me around," Pierce said hotly, some of his natural arrogance returning along with his clothes.

"Sure, I can order you around all I want," I said. "Knowledge is power, and I'm a Robert Pierce expert. See you in fifteen."

Pierce glowered at me, looking like he wanted to wring my neck. But he didn't say anything, just stalked out. As he headed off, I couldn't resist a parting shot. "And you better not let me catch you in the hallway eavesdropping," I warned him. "Go take a cold shower."

Th
en I turned to Linda. The low-cut neckline of her slinky yellow dress was askew, and one of her assets was popping out. I figured she did that on purpose to distract me, so I determinedly ignored it, forcing my eyes to focus on her face instead.

"Okay, bombshell," I said cheerfully. "Spill it."

13

"You pathetic private eye wannabe," Linda spit out, but I stopped her.

"So what's up with you and Pierce and the Hack?" I asked. "You guys do threesomes?"

She smashed the desktop, hard, with her fist. Then she did a strange thing. She leaned against the desk, threw back her head, and laughed so hard her breasts jiggled. There wasn't much joy in that laughter, though, just irony and disgust.

Finally I asked, "You almost through?"

"Yeah, I'm
through,
all right," she said acidly. "Just my luck, I come along after Bill and Monica. Now every pissant politician in America is scared the voters'll find out he's not a model of Christian purity."

"So Pierce is scared?"

"You kidding? You're all scared shitless,
all
of you.
Men."
Her lips curled. "If I could do it over again, I'd can the bombshell routine, go to law school instead. Worst thing ever happened to me was these stupid boobs." With that she stuffed her wayward left breast back into her skimpy dress.

"Why don't we get back to the facts."

"Yeah, sure,
facts
. What the hell is a fact?"

This lady would be perfect as a Jerry Springer guest. "How long have you been sleeping with Pierce?" I asked.

"Hey, I don't need to talk to you. I don't have a political career for you to ruin."

"But you do have a family that could be ruined," I reminded her, and instantly felt like a real asshole.

I expected her to scream at me, but I guess she decided it wouldn't do any good. Instead she said, "How the hell should I know when I started fucking him? When did that old Congressman die—Mo Wilson?"

That seemed like a non sequitu
r, but I humored her. "Last May."

"Then the answer's May. I took Robert to bed a week later."

Something clicked. "Was there a connection between Congressman Wilson dying and your taking Pierce to bed?"

"Hell, yes. My sonufabitch husband,
Ducky,
was too much of a wimp to run for Congress. He likes being a big duck in a small pond. Said he's too old to go to Washington and start over."

"But you wanted to go."

Linda's face twisted with outrage.
"I'm
not too old to start over! What does Ducky expect me to do, spend the rest of my life in that lousy house in the most boring suburb in the universe? I want to have fun! I'm not ready to die just yet, thank you very much!"

"And you figured Pierce was gonna run for Congress," I prodded.

She eyed me challengingly, like she was trying to shock me, and said harshly, "Right. So I made up an excuse to go in his office. Talk about a pushover. Took me five minutes tops before I was fucking his brains out. I will say one thing for him, though, at least he can get it up. Unlike Ducky, who refuses to take Viagra because he's afraid he'll get a heart attack."

This was way more detail than I needed. Although it did occur to me that after a decade plus of being married to a predatory shark like Linda, I might have trouble getting it up myself.

"So you and Pierce became lovers. And you were hoping, what, he gets elected, and then you divorce Ducky, marry Pierce, and go to Washington?"

Linda nodded. "Why not? This Congressional seat is so safe, I figured Robert could survive a tiny little sexual scandal and still get reel
ected. We'd just have to be discreet, that's all. I'd wait a few months after divorcing Ducky before I married Robert. Then it's good-bye Clifton Park, hello Washington. Party with the big boys while I still have my looks."

"Did Robert know you were planning to marry him?"

"Are you kidding? He was talking marriage the first day."

I eyed her skeptically. She shrugged. "I'm very good in bed," she said matter-of-factly.

I was tempted to ask her, if she was so good in bed, then why was Ducky having trouble getting it up? Instead I said, "But Robert didn't run for Congress after all."

She frowned bitterly. "No. He said he would, but then the bastard double-crossed me."

"Why?"

For the first time her hazel eyes showed uncertainty. "I don't know."

"Come on, why'd he change his mind about running? You must have some idea."

"He wouldn't tell me. Believe me, I tried everything. I screamed, I sweet-talked, I gave blow jobs, I threatened to leave him, but nothing worked."

"Was he being blackmailed?"

"About our affair? No, nobody knew. We were so careful it was ridiculous."

"What if he was being blackmailed about something else?"

She cocked her head at me. "Maybe. But he would have told me. Why, is there something you know about?"

I sidestepped her question and tried out Pierce's own explanation on her. "Maybe he felt guilty asking Ducky to push him for Congress, when here he was doing the boogie woogie with Ducky's wife."

She shook her head in exasperation, her Farrah Fawcett do flying around her shoulders. "Why don't you ask
him?
I really don't know. I was so pissed off I split up with him."

"He said it was the other way around."

"In his dreams." She gave a sardonic grin. "I told him I loved him, but I couldn't deal with cheating on my husband anymore."

Her story sounded mo
re real than Pierce's. I was beginning to get a feel for this lady's
modus operandi
. "But then, after the Hack died, and Pierce decided to run for Congress after all…"

"...
I called him up and said I'd been missing him unbearably all these lonely months, and I was desperate to see him again and caress his gorgeous body."

"I take it he didn't need much convincing."

"No."

"Even though this could destroy his campaign."

"Hey, men aren't the smartest creatures in the world."

"When did you call him up to get back together?"

"Last night. You just broke up our big oh-God-I-missed-you-so-much fuck."

"Wait a minute. You're lying.
You were already sleeping with Pierce last week."

"What gives you that idea?"

"Your husband told me."

"You talked to Ducky?" I didn't answer. Linda looked puzzled. "Look, I don't know why Ducky would lie about this. But it's Jack I was sleeping with last week, not Pierce. I ought to remember who I sleep with. I'm not
that
big of a slut."

I felt hopelessly befuddled. Was there some magic P.I. technique I was missing? I shifted gears. "Okay, back up a few months. When Pierce refused to run, and Jack got the nomination instead . . ."

She knew where I was going, and nodded. "Right, that's when I started sleeping with Jack. The guy had been hitting on me for two years, ever since I went to work for him."

Linda was sitting in her
chair now, talking in a conversational tone. She seemed to actually enjoy answering my questions. Maybe it had been a long time since she'd been honest with anyone.

I tried to keep the tone light, hoping something useful would spill out of her. "Why'd you take this job, anyway? I'm surprised you'd want to be a secretary."

"It beats being stuck all day in the suburb from hell. Ducky and Jack worked out a deal where I got paid for nine to five, but I didn't have to do much work. And if I wanted to get my hair done or whatever, I could just take off."

"Nice. But I assume the Hack hitting on you wasn't part of the deal."

"No, he thought that up on his own. I didn't go for it."

"Why not?"

"Why waste my time? I figured he was going nowhere, just a lifetime ass kisser. I was shocked when he asked Ducky and the rest to endorse him, and they actually said yes. You know what? I think he ran for Congress to impress me."

"And it worked."

"Well enough that I gave him what he wanted."

"But he was married."

"So?"

"You really thought he'd divorce his wife and marry you?"

"What can I tell you? Every man I ever slept with has asked me to marry him."

The woman had about as much sexual self-doubt as Madonna. Talk about narcissistic.

But what if something happened to shake up her exalted opinion of herself?

"So according to you
, everything was going great between you and the Hack until..."

"Until he got blasted. Just my luck."

I took a breath. "Was it really luck?"

She cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe the truth is, he said he
wouldn't
marry you. And you were so mad at him for resisting your feminine charms, and refusing to spirit you away to Washington, that you shot him."

She shoved her chair back and stood up, no longer enjoying our little chat. "Give it a rest. I'd never care enough about any man to
shoot
him. And besides, Jack had already filed for divorce—though he was keeping it secret till after the election." She opened the door to go out. "Hey, it's been real, sweetheart, but your fifteen minutes are up."

I had one more question. "Do you know what Jack was planning to talk about at that radio debate, the night he got killed?"

"Yeah. Cutting taxes, and family values. Why is it the family values guys are always so easy to seduce?"

I didn't have an answer to that, but I realized I did have yet another question. "How can you hate men so much, but be so into sex?"

"Because I like seeing how stupid you get," Linda said, and walked out.

Pierce wasn't back yet
, so I turned on the Hack's computer. Fortunately there was no password, and despite my computer illiteracy, I found his campaign documents quickly enough—they were all stashed in a file called "Congress." But reading through the stuff was like swimming through mud. I mean, how many times can you read "capital gains tax cuts" and "preserving the moral fiber of our society" without going bug-eyed?

There were three different speeches in his computer, labeled "20 minutes," "10 minutes," and "2 minutes." I was almost finished with the task of reading them when I discovered an interesting notation at the bottom of the two-minute speech: "fo
r debate intro, cut 30 seconds—100 words." So this must be the speech he planned to use at the radio debate. It would have worked just as well as a lullaby.

"I don't have all day," someone snarled at me from across the room.

It was Pierce. The Hack's speeches must have done some of their lullaby work on me, because I hadn't even heard Pierce come in. I woke up fast and attacked. "You lied to me last night," I said.

"What are you talking about?" he asked aggressively.

"You said you weren't seeing Linda anymore."

"I wasn't. Not until today."

I laughed abruptly. "You expect me to believe that?"

"It's true. She called me last night, right after you left."

So his story matched Linda's. Miracle of miracles, maybe people were actually being straight with me for a change. "What did Linda say last night that got you running down here all of a sudden?"

Pierce shifted in his seat and his face unexpectedly reddened. He looked shy, like a teenage girl talking about a first date. "She said she missed me and wanted to get back together."

"How sweet. And what did
you
say?"

His old belligerence re
turned. "Well, it's pretty obvious what I said, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. You were
willing to risk your whole campaign for her?" He sat there glowering. "What happened to your campaign appearances in Lake Placid?"

"I blew them off. I said I was sick."

"There's something fishy here, Pierce. No politician I ever heard of would just
blow
off
a campaign appearance. Not with one week left before a very close election."

"Look, I love Linda. She's the best thing that ever happened to me."

I stared at the poor lovestruck clown and he looked away, embarrassed.
Good God,
I was thinking,
if Linda Medwick is the best thing that ever happened to you, then you've had a pretty sorry life.

I hated to burst his bubble, but . . . "Did
you know she was sleeping with the Hack?"

Pierce's eyes jumped. His jaw went slack. "Bullshit."

I was tempted to believe he really didn't know. But then that old joke came to me: How can you tell when a politician is lying? When his lips move.

I stood over Pierce and put my face three inches from his, just like in the TV cop shows. "Bullshit yourself. You knew about the Hack, all right. Is that why you killed him?"

"What?!"

"You pulled an O.J. Simpson."

"Hey—"