Authors: Robert Ellis
The door swung open, flooding the edit suite with light. Frank turned and saw Linda lugging a canvas bag filled with video cassettes into the room. She was finally back from her long weekend in Colorado with Jason Hardly.
“We’re almost finished,” Frank said. “How did your trip go?”
She was looking at Juliana and seemed concerned. “Okay,” she said.
“Let’s take a look, Kip.”
There wasn’t a third seat at the client’s table. As Kip rewound the spot, Linda moved to the couch behind them and sat down. When she settled and looked back at him, Frank wondered what was wrong.
Kip switched off the lights, and Frank turned back to watch.
It was a positive spot set to music. The announcer’s voice was soothing but strong, and implied that what Mel Merdock stood for was self-evident. The shots flowed one after another. Merdock striding through a lobby on his way to an important meeting that would never be held. Merdock grabbing a microphone and pointing off camera at a fake press conference in which the future of the world seemed to be at stake. Merdock patting the shoulder of a campaign volunteer dressed up as a cop with his face turned so that no one would know he wasn’t a real cop. Merdock standing beside Juliana outside their church greeting friends and neighbors they had never even met before.
Frank knew that the shots added up to someone the people could trust. Someone who was ready to represent the state of Virginia and get things done on Capitol Hill. At least on TV, Mel Merdock had every appearance of being a real senator now.
VOICE-OVER ANNOUNCER:
He’s the one person running for the U.S. Senate who stood up to the lobbyists and special interest groups. The one person with new ideas. He’s Mel Merdock. Merdock supports a crime bill that puts more cops on the street and more criminals in jail. He wants to modernize schools, expand technology programs so our kids can compete in the global market place. And Mel Merdock has always pushed to lower taxes for middle-class families so that we can restore the values that made our country great. He’s not a politician. He’s Mel Merdock. The change Virginia needs.
Kip spun his chair around and smiled at Frank. Anyone watching the spot might think that Mel Merdock was a direct descendent of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. It was a home run in a campaign that everyone knew had turned the corner.
“There’s something about the last shot,” Juliana said. “Do I really need to be in it?”
Frank laughed. “It’s perfect. Believe me.”
Kip raised the lights to a dim glow. Frank stood up and started packing files into his briefcase.
“Why is it perfect?” she asked.
“Because you’re looking at Mel, and so is everybody else.”
“You mean he’s the focus of the shot.”
Frank nodded, glancing at Linda. She had been watching them closely and had a distant look on her face.
The door opened and Randolph walked in. He seemed hesitant with Juliana and Linda in the room, then stopped before the client’s table.
“Olson’s been released. He’s out.”
Frank looked the detective over. It wasn’t hesitation. Randolph was worried.
“How?” Frank asked.
“We didn’t have enough to hold him. I’m sorry, Frank. He’s got a friend in the courthouse. Some judge who’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He talked his way out.”
“Did he say why Woody called him?”
Randolph shook his head. “He wouldn’t speak to anyone but the judge. He’s up to something. He’s an angry drunk and he’s bitter. But he’s still a smart lawyer.”
Frank’s moment of peace had only lasted for ten hours. “What am I supposed to do, lay low and watch my back?”
“Sounds like good advice to me,” Randolph said.
* * *
Frank crossed the Memorial Bridge and passed a sign welcoming him to Arlington, Virginia. He cracked open the window and pulled out that pack of cigarettes he kept for emergencies. As he lit up and took a deep pull, he thought about what he was about to do: confront Ozzie Olson, the man who had lost an election two years ago and was having trouble letting go.
Frank had meant to go back to the office for his gun, just in case. But Linda had canceled her edit for unknown reasons, and he didn’t want to be alone with her. Beyond Olson, he didn’t want to hear about her trip to Colorado. Details fueled the imagination and he didn’t want to go down that road right now.
He got rid of his cigarette and focused on Olson again. Making a left at the light, he found himself driving through a run-down part of town, passing a factory and office building, gutted and all burned out. He was looking for 322 Speeker Street, the address the operator had given him over his cell phone. He saw it on the corner, one block ahead, a small red-brick building. He parked and got out. As he crossed the street, he noticed a liquor store, a bail bondsman and a life insurance company all conveniently located in the same low-rent building. Then he spotted the steps leading down to a basement office. A cheap sign read METRO LEGAL, OZZIE OLSON, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. As the sun went behind a cloud and the building suddenly darkened, Frank wondered if he shouldn’t put aside his rage, get back in the car, and drive home.
Chapter 38
Frank noticed a trash can set beside the door to Olson’s basement office. The top was off, the garbage inside attracting a swarm of flies. Moving down the steps, he waved them away and carefully opened the door. The lights were off. No one appeared to be home. As he entered and closed the door behind him, he let his eyes adjust to the darkness and listened to the stillness.
Dim light feeding in from the street through small windows along the right wall revealed the clutter of a life that had hit bottom. He could smell mildew mixed with sweat and cheap whisky in the air. He stood in a makeshift lobby staring at a narrow passageway that ran to a rear entrance somewhere in the darkness beyond. The passageway split the space in half and there appeared to be an office on each side enclosed by panels of frosted glass.
Frank wiped the empty receptionist’s desk, noting the dust, then started down the passageway. At the first door on the left he stopped and looked inside. Olson had turned the space into a darkroom. The red light remained on, the sink running. As Frank moved into the room, he noticed an enlarger projecting an image of a fleshy woman onto the Formica counter. He checked the sink, finding prints of the same woman rinsing in the water. The woman was nude with hideous blisters and burns all over her body. It looked like a personal injury case and Frank guessed that Olson was making a living any way he could.
Frank stepped back into the darkness, moving further down the passageway until he reached the door on the right. It was Olson’s office. As he entered, he passed a foldout couch with bedding and stopped before a computer set up on a card table by the desk. Picking up a DVD, he found a box of ten more, all unlabeled, all blanks. When he spotted Olson’s business cards, he moved a liquor bottle aside and pocketed one.
The place was a dump.
Frank knew that Olson had been a partner at a major law firm just a few short years ago. He had been successful, an opponent Frank had feared as he prepared Helen Pryor for the election. Now, as he sat down at the man’s desk, he couldn’t help feeling mesmerized by the plunge Olson had taken.
On the wall were the markers pointing to Olson’s former life:
Attorney of the Year
,
Person of the Year
, more than one
Great Dad Award
. Losing an election was part of the business no one liked to think about. The fear of what a client went through if he or she was the candidate left holding the short end of the stick. The quality of darkness that followed them after election night, weighing them down for months, years, sometimes even a lifetime. It was the label of a loser. The brand of someone who didn’t have the right stuff and had let everyone around them down. Frank had lived through it with his own clients and knew with certainty that he would face it again. But experience didn’t make it any easier.
The back door opened and Frank heard footsteps.
He jumped out of the chair, his heart racing. They were moving toward him slowly and Frank wondered if he should stick it out or make a run for it to his car. But it wasn’t Olson who appeared in the doorway. Instead, a spooky old man poked his head inside the office and gave him a long look.
“You fellas still here?” the old man said in an irritated voice. “I was just coming down to lock up. That other cop said you’d be done by noon.”
Switching on the overhead light, the old man shuffled into the room and sat down on the arm of the couch. He let out a groan, jingling the ring of keys in his hand. He was thin and frail and had the weightless body of someone who had been ravaged by too many cigarettes and too much booze. Frank realized that the old man had mistaken him for a cop. And playing along with him seemed like the easiest way out of the office, the quickest way back to his car.
“Almost,” he said awkwardly. “What do you know about Olson?”
“What do I know about him?” the old man quipped. “I’ve already been through that with the other fella. Randolph, Rudolph—I forget his name.”
Frank moved back to the desk chair, eyeing the computer as he sat down. “Does Olson do much work?”
“Depends on how the ambulances are running, I guess.”
Frank glanced at the liquor bottles on the desk, then back at the old man. “You ever have a drink with him?”
The old man shrugged, hiding a guilty smile.
“What’s he talk about mostly?” Frank asked.
“The election,” the old man said. “How the guy who beat him cheated and lied. Ozzie got fired after that. He lost his job. He lost his wife and family and everyone of his friends. That’s all he ever talks about.”
“I thought he ran against a woman?”
“He did. But it was the guy running her campaign. Some big shot. He’s the one who did this to him.”
Frank heard the sound of a fly buzzing around the room and wondered if he had left the front door open. He looked at the overhead light and watched the insect crash into the globe, take a few steps and begin circling in the musty air again.
“Then Olson’s divorced,” Frank said evenly.
The old man shook his head. “Not yet. He’s hoping that she’ll take him back.”
“Where is he?”
“He had to meet somebody. Then he said he wanted to visit his kids.”
The old man gave Frank another long look, then stood up on his shaky legs. As he moved to the door, he stopped a moment, gazing at the plaques on the wall.
“Politics sure is a dirty business, ain’t it? Two years ago Ozzie was at the top. Sweet Jesus, now he lives down here!”
The old man’s words hit Frank like a slap in the face.
He watched the old man shuffle through the doorway and vanish around the corner. When he heard the back door close and the sound of the old man starting up the steps, he swiveled the chair around until he faced the desk. He noticed his hand trembling slightly as his eyes came to rest on the speaker phone. When he saw the redial button, he pushed it and the phone came to life. Frank listened to it dial a number, his mind drifting over the details of the election. Olson had managed to leave a few points out as he recounted his story to the old man over whisky. Frank remembered Olson’s media consultant running a negative campaign from the very beginning. Olson signed off on it and they were tearing Helen Pryor apart. It was a dirty campaign bordering on vicious and designed to appeal to the religious right. The fanatics were eating it up like Olson had the only direct line to God. In their hit pieces sent through the mail, Helen was labeled a baby killer. On TV, the insinuations were just as subtle. It had been hardball politics until the end and Olson had lost everything. But the old man only confirmed what Randolph and Grimes had said. Olson blamed Frank for the loss. He’d snapped and now three people were dead.
The phone began to ring, then connect—the voice at the other end jogging Frank’s mind back to the surface slowly at first, then with a violent snap. He knew the voice and felt a sudden pain in his chest as everything inside him cut to black.
It was Linda.
The voice said it was as her answering machine picked up from home. “This is Linda Reynolds. I’m sorry I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, I’ll call you back. Thanks for calling.”
The phone beeped. Frank sat there staring at it, listening to the silence at the other end of the line. He could hear his heart pounding beneath his shirt and watched as a bead of sweat dropped from his forehead splattering onto the desk.
Ozzie Olson had engineered Woody’s murder and was speaking with Linda. They were in touch.
The phone clicked, followed by dial tone. Frank looked away, spotting a photograph of Olson with his wife and two kids. They were standing in front of their country home, smiling, happy, everything in their lives just right. Frank recognized the photo from the campaign. It had appeared in a brochure after Olson was endorsed by every newspaper in the state. At the time, no one thought Olson could lose.