"What are we celebrating?" he called after her.
Celebrating? From the urgency of her phone call, he must
have known something was up.
"I must talk to you," she had said on the phone.
"Tonight come for dinner."
"Tonight?"
She brought in the chilled pâté and put it on the plates,
sitting opposite him.
"Pour the wine, please," she said.
"What is it?" he asked, bottle poised.
"Just pour it, please."
He obeyed, watching her eyes. A few scarlet drops fell on
the lace cloth.
"Sorry."
Just before he'd arrived, she was at the peak of her
resolve, a condition that was quickly receding. I'm sorry, darling, she said
silently. Sipping her wine, she picked at her pâté, put some in her mouth, but
couldn't swallow. He saw it and started to push himself from his chair.
"Don't..."
He sat back, throwing his napkin on the table.
"What have you done to me?" she whispered.
"I'm not even in control of myself anymore."
"Hey," he said. "You're not exactly an
innocent. I'm as hooked as you are."
"That doesn't change anything."
She watched as a confused frown etched itself on his
forehead.
"What set it off? Things were wonderful this
morning."
The memory of the broken, doll-like figure at the bottom of
the ravine popped into her mind like a photographic slide. Lowering her eyes,
she looked at her pâté, her stomach lurching.
"I just can't go on, Clint. Not this way."
"Inevitable, I guess. It all boils down to a tacky
little scene."
It was not that he was being deliberately cruel. She had
noted it before, the journalist's objectively trained mind, looking from the
outside in. She knew his pain was as acute as her own. "Forget it,
Fi," he added quickly as if editing his copy. "I don't know how to
react. I've never been through this before."
"Marry me. Divorce her," she blurted. The words
had come out in a whoosh, almost taking her breath away. Marriage? In the end
that's what they all wanted.
"Haven't we been through that?" he said, standing
up, pacing now.
"No," she said, her eyes brimming. "You've
been through it. Not me."
"I'm just not ready." In the candlelight, his
eyes had misted as well. "Not yet."
"Well, I am. Overdone."
"Breaking up a family is a tough step," he said.
His pacing had brought him closer to her.
"I know," she nodded, thinking suddenly of her
own family. In that cabbage-smelling Irish Catholic nest, such things were
unthinkable.
"I need time," he said softly. She had expected
the retort, searching her mind for an apt response. Take all the time you need,
she wanted to say. It was the way she dealt with suspected murderers when she
had whipped them down to the edge of confession. To deliver what had to be said
next would take all the courage she could muster.
"You've had time."
He paced away again, shoulders drooping. She fought her
compassion, bludgeoned herself to reason.
"I just can't live this way, Clint. It hurts too
much." How could this have happened to her? Fiona FitzGerald,
self-reliant, controlled, wary, street-smart Fiona. She had learned to deal
with almost anything.
Suddenly the steak was burning, sending waves of smoke from
the broiler. She ran to the kitchen, and without thinking grabbed the glowing
metal, screaming in pain. Clint rushed in, grabbed a dishcloth and threw the
charred meat, pan and all, into the sink. A douse of cold water made it sizzle
and smoke. Reaching for her burnt hand, he put it under the tap.
When it cooled, he brought her fingers to his lips and
kissed them. She made a half-hearted effort to remove them from his grasp, but
her resolution had dissolved and she fell against him, embracing him tightly.
"Give me more time," he pleaded, leading her out
of the kitchen. She went, docile, and expectant. Defeated. Trapped. Like the
jumper?
Like
Dorothy?
Later, in the calm of his arms, wedged against his cool
flesh, she tried vainly to put the scene in perspective. The room was pitch
black, but she refused to look at the radial dial of her bedside clock. That
was his problem, she told herself defiantly, dreading the moment when he would
rise and squint toward it. His stomach growled and she fingered the line of
hair on his belly.
"You're hungry," she whispered.
"Not any more."
The memory of their encounter made her smile and she dug
her knuckles into his belly.
"It must have been the jumper that set me off,"
she said.
"Blue Monday," he said. She felt for his eyes
which were open. "Jumper?"
"A suicide. At least, that's what it looks like. A
beautiful young woman. Good for maybe a half century more of living."
Saying it aloud sparked her caution. She wondered if she was deliberately
inserting the equation, injecting fear like a threat. She could only hear his
soft breathing in the long silence that followed.
"I'm going to tell her, Fi. Tell Ann."
The thump in her chest prevented a response.
"It's against the grain. I'm a lousy liar."
She had tried not to imagine his life at home, the ordinary
pursuit of family business, other concerns, other worries. That took place on
another planet. Except that she knew that he and Ann shared a bed, touched. It
was an image getting exceedingly difficult to block out of her mind.
"You're not the only one living alone," he said.
"Does she notice?" Fi asked. There she was,
empathizing again. The portrait he had painted was of a woman obsessed with
achievement, someone who had grudgingly taken time out for the sake of her
children, then thrown herself back into the fray with an awesome resolve.
"She's too involved with her job. And I don't give her
reason not to be. Hell, she thinks I go to work early, a real eager beaver. And
I'm home every night, almost." The thought triggered his anxiety and he
looked at the radial clock.
"My God. It's nearly three." Rolling over her, he
got out of bed and started to dress. Reaching out, she touched his thigh, as if
it were necessary to leave a last mark on his body.
"I don't believe you," she said calmly. "I
believe you want to, but you won't. It's too comfortable this way."
He stopped dressing and looked down at her, bending to
brush his hand over her forehead.
"See, you're scared. Then you'd be stuck with
me."
Love, however complex, seemed a charted course compared to
reading the future. At thirty-two, she was still young enough for kids. There
were moments when that seemed almost idyllic. Moments, too, when it seemed like
penal servitude. Tell him to get lost, she begged herself.
Always, when he prepared to leave--perhaps the act of
dressing was erotic for her--she felt the pull of sexual longing. It was when
she needed him most. Needed! When had it become need, she cried silently,
knowing that for him anxiety had already taken hold and the extra time spent
would only make it worse.
There was nothing to do but close her eyes, shut him out
until he bent over her for that last sweet kiss. It was an act she let happen,
although it hurt rather than consoled her. The thing, this monster inside, had
reduced her to a simpering slave.
"Wednesday?"
"Like always," she sighed.
She listened for the click of his key rolling the chamber
of the double lock, caging her once again. Again, she thought of the girl, the
jumper, the broken body, the half smile. The image stuck to her like paste.
Trained as she was for odd hours and catnaps, she was
always too energized for sleep after Clint had gone. Getting out of bed, she
gobbled up the remainders of both portions of pâté and washed it down with red
wine, directly from the bottle. To fight the first surge of loss, she called Benton in his office. He seemed always to be there at these odd hours.
A relationship, personal and professional, had grown up
between them ever since the Remington case. It leaped over whatever barriers of
race, age and gender that existed between them. Reluctantly, even with some
embarrassment, he accepted her confidences, offering only the wisdom of his
years. Essentially a moral man, he was by experience, if not by instinct, conservative
and cautious. A darker skin--two grandparents were quadroons--had taught him
that survival was still the first priority. Because of that, he had chosen a
role in the bureaucracy where he had risen more by skill than ambition. His
dead wife had been his only love, but he seemed to know a great deal about
women. Many of them gave away their secrets on his autopsy table.
His voice on the telephone, deep and resonant with its
cajun cadence, soothed and comforted her.
"The young woman," she said, after the amenities.
"The jumper. Caucasian."
"A skeletal grab-bag."
"Death instantaneous?"
He hesitated. "She dropped from 300 feet. I could give
you the technical data."
"Was she dead before the fall?"
"You suspect that, Fiona?"
She ignored the question.
"Did you take a vaginal swab?" she asked.
"It wasn't requested," Dr. Benton said, the
bureaucrat's caution showing. It was, they both knew, a detective's option in a
suicide.
"I forgot."
"All orifices?"
"Might as well," she said. "I know it's
extra work, Dr. Benton."
"Nothing lost in going with your instincts,
Fiona."
"At least we'll have the information, just in
case." Not wanting to ring off just yet, she volunteered information.
"Next of kin probably won't claim the body. It looks like she's a
candidate for burning."
"Sad," he said.
"Cheaper, too," she said coldly.
He seemed to detect her depression, despite her efforts to
remain professional. The conversation was quickly ended when she couldn't think
of anything more to say.
Feeling alone again, she threw herself on the bed. The
sheets were cold, even where his indentation had been made.
"Fool," she cried. "Dying for a man..."
At least Dorothy was safe from them forever.
Jason Martin sat in his parked car on Cathedral Avenue
across the street from the townhouse in which he had rented the ground floor
apartment. The upper floors were deserted. The house was owned by a foreign
service officer on temporary duty in Malaysia, a stroke of luck.
He had looked very carefully for the apartment, which had
to satisfy a variety of conditions: total privacy, centrally located on a quiet
off street, roomy and attractive. Above all, it had to appear "safe."
"But why do we need another place?" Dorothy
asked. He still had his old apartment on Capitol Hill.
"You'll see."
"Gosh. It's pretty. Like a hideaway."
"You got it. A place to hide. Just trust me, baby.
You've got to trust me. It's all for us. You'll see."
"I love it," she said. "And we'll fix it up
all in white. Real pretty."
"Do whatever you want. It's your place," he said,
looking out the rear window. The narrow yard stretched out to a chain-link
fence, beyond which was a deep ravine which fell sharply to Rock Creek Parkway.
They were a stone's throw from Calvert Street and the high stone bridge.
"Look how high," she said, crouching beside him
at the kitchen window. She pressed her cheek against the pane.
"They call it suicide bridge. Lots have gone over. I
did a story on it once."
"Gosh." She shivered and he put an arm around her
shoulders.
Perfect, he'd decided. He had Dorothy call the agent and
pay three months rent in advance.
Glancing at his watch, he sipped beer from a can. Anxiety
had dried his throat. It had begun to happen.
Had the idea come to him like a light going on in one of
those balloons of comic character expressions, or had it seethed and festered
like garbage creating methane gas? He would never be certain.
He was not even sure whether or not he had asked her to
come with him to Washington. Had it simply occurred, a natural event like
sunrise or rain? There she was, crunched close beside him in his car heading
east on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, her hand on his inner thigh.
"We'll have one hell of a time, Dot," he had
said.
"Great."
Nor did he have any clear idea how she would fit into his
life, barren now, shorn of family and self-respect. Half-woman, half-child, she
might be a surrogate family for him, a comfort without the pressure of Jane's
probing and intellectualizing, a mere child to be stroked and petted.
He was ashamed at showing her the untidiness of his
apartment, such an obvious reflection of his inner life, but she went to work
without a word and by the time they were ready for bed, she had made it cleaner
and more orderly than Jane had ever done.
"Do you like it here?" he asked after they made
love that first night in the apartment together. Where Jane had been
indifferent and sometimes hostile to their sex life, Dorothy was eager,
deliciously wanton.
"I love this," she told him.
"And me?"
"I think you're the greatest, Jason."
The greatest? It was certainly coincidental that she had
dropped into his life at the moment of his most profound anguish. A heavenly
gift, he decided, toying with thoughts of fate and the cosmos.
His altercation with Barrows, so utterly unnecessary in
retrospect, had further eroded his position with Webster. He had considered an
apology, but it was too late. A hotshot's fall from grace was something to be
cheered in this nest of bloated egos fighting for space and by-lines. Webster
enjoyed watching his stars collide, disintegrate and reform into new stars in
his whirling solar system.
When Webster called him into his office on his first day
back, he'd expected to get worse news. To be fired for
"insubordination" was a favorite management ploy, but it did require
a Newspaper Guild hearing, a process that had a flavor of humiliation about it.
Having a committee rule on the issue of holding one's job didn't do much for
one's pride. Besides, hadn't he already earned his journalist's stripes?
"How could you do this to me?" he asked Webster
after he'd announced that henceforth Jason would be covering the Fairfax County
Council, a kind of Siberia for someone of his experience. Worse, he would have
to take orders from another young hotshot working his way up the ladder.
"This paper's a machine, Jason," Webster told him
blandly. "You got a faulty cog, the whole thing rattles." His arm
swept over the city room. "I got a thousand egos to placate. You're just
one." Keep cool, Jason warned himself.
"You're cutting off my cojones, Paul," he told
the editor, forcing a pose of contrition. At all costs, he'd decided, he needed
this job now. Avoiding Webster's eyes, he looked downward and saw a proof of
tomorrow's page one sprawled across Webster's desk. A headline read: "SEC
Commissioner Resigns."
"I had no choice, Jason. It's all I can give you
now," Webster said.
"It used to be different."
"Things change." Jason's eyes shifted again to
the page proof.
"So I see." He was being deliberately cryptic. At
one time he'd practically worshipped Webster.
"Do you good to go back to straight journalism,
Jason," Webster said, winking inexplicably, as if there were a conspiracy
between them.
"The Fairfax County Council. I'm overqualified for
that and you know it."
"The opening is there," Webster snapped, showing
his sense of command. "I don't have to justify it." He became
absorbed in the page proof, an obvious dismissal.
"Still playing that on one?" Jason asked.
"They eat it up," Webster muttered, ignoring the
obvious malice. Jason stood rooted before the desk. Webster looked up again.
"Just do the job," he said, his tone placating now. Jason knew what
was coming. The editor's system was the carrot and the stick. "We'll watch
you, kid. Keep it straight for awhile." Webster studied him calmly.
"Put the flame on low--it'll do you good." His eyes drifted slowly
back to the page proofs.
"And if I come up with a really big one? I've still
got contacts..." There was a note of desperation in his voice now. Leave
it alone, he told himself simultaneously, knowing it was Big Jake's voice
prodding him.
"Sure, kid."
Webster said it like offering a useless trifle. It was an
unmistakable dismissal. Hypocrite, Jason had screamed within himself as the
offensive headline caught his eye once again. You wait, he jeered silently, I'll
come up with something that will blow your mind.
The taste of bile flooded the back of his throat as he
strode out of the city room under Barrows's triumphant gaze. Screw you, he
mimed to him as the elevator door closed.
"I'm unfit for human consumption," he'd told
Dorothy later. She had tried everything to dispel the gloom. For brief periods,
her lovemaking comforted him, then he sank again into depression and
sleeplessness. When she came at him again in the early hours he pushed her away
roughly, although he apologized quickly for it.
"All I want is for you to be happy," she'd said.
"I know, baby."
He had wanted to explain what had happened to him, but the
thought of everything else it involved was discouraging--his childhood, his
failed father, the fear of genetic emulation, the ego-bruising life with Jane,
the loss of his son--a litany of outrageous self-pity. His earlier success at
the paper had made the pain recede, and he had hoped he could put those
thoughts out of his mind forever.
But things had changed around him. There was no more oxygen
for the pure blue flame of indignation that he thrived on. They were getting
into trivia, sex as substantive newsworthiness, scandal-mongering. How could he
explain to this flower of the slag heap what it all meant?
"You've been good to me, Jason."
"That's it? That's the criterion?" He corrected
himself, knowing that she wouldn't comprehend. "Am I the missing
father?"
"What?"
She had told him that she had only known her father
briefly, a miner crushed in a cave-in when she was three. Psychological
implications were Jane's bag. Raking up those coals wouldn't help here.
"Never mind."
"I'll do anything to help." She traced his lips
with her fingers. "To get a little smile."
Miraculously, he'd actually smiled.
"I'd like to show that bastard," he muttered.
Webster, he knew, was at the heart of the problem--he alone was setting the
tone of the paper, approving every story down to the last word. "I'll come
up with something that'll blow his mind."
She giggled suddenly, her implication clear.
"I said his mind."
He slapped her playfully on a bare buttock, and the idea
had come fully formed, screaming into his consciousness. Hadn't it been there
all along?
"Suppose it was important to me. To us..." He
paused, watching her calm face, assessing her, sensing the living idea as it
sculpted itself in his mind, wondering how deep an explanation would be
required.
Her eyelids flickered, long dark lashes brushing her
cheeks, as if in consent.
"You're my man now," she assured him, patting him
possessively.
"...you know," he stammered, hating the empty
words, the flotsam of the inarticulate. "It's a lot to ask."
She shrugged. Perhaps she already knew what was coming. Her
face was placid, unalarmed.
"Like having relations with other men," he said,
averting his eyes, but adding quickly, "Not for money." Too late, he
realized his error. She would have understood money.
Her expression when he turned to watch her again seemed
confused. But he didn't find panic there. He felt self-righteous about not
saying "make love," certain that those words would profane the thing
between them.
"Would you do that?" he pressed. "For
me?"
He held his breath as she retreated inside herself, her
eyes glazed with deep inner thoughts. He did not deny to himself his own shame
in making the demand, nor the violation to all his past ethics. But
circumstances were forcing him to chart new ground, find new rules, explore a
new landscape of morality.
"It wouldn't turn out like with Jimbo?" she
whispered tentatively, revealing her consent. He wondered if it were out of
loyalty or survival or even love.
"Of course not," he said with exaggerated
indignation, the plan emerging now clearly shaped.
"I wouldn't want anything to come between us,
Jason," she said firmly, as if to recapture her dignity.
"Between us?" He kissed her deeply.
"Never." He searched his mind for some disarming illustration.
"It will be like play-acting. That's all."
"Acting?" She shook her head. "I don't know,
Jason. I'm a bad liar. I always get found out."
"Acting isn't lying. It's a game. And it could do
great things for us. For what I've got in mind." He checked himself,
unsure about how far he could explain it. "Trust me, baby. It could be
very important."
"Important?"
"I mean the men would be important. Powerful."
"Powerful?"
He was sure he was only confusing her now. This was not
within the parameters of her understanding. Men were men in physical terms
only. Old and young, big and small. Gradations of power seemed out of her frame
of reference.
"And you wouldn't get mad or jealous?"
"Not if you were true to me in your heart."
In the half-light, her body was as smooth as alabaster, her
features soft.
"You're a beautiful girl, Dot," he said with
feeling. Bending over her, he kissed her again. As always, she tasted sweet and
he thought of candy.
"You're the perfect gift," he whispered.
"Those lucky guys."
She seemed so innocent. Virginal. Yet something eluded him.
There seemed more to her than her tantalizing physicality. Something deep
inside of her, something hidden.
"I won't hurt you," he said with feeling.
"Never."
She turned toward him and embraced him and he felt his
whole being rise to meet her. She would be his vindication.
Poor Arthur Fellows, he thought with sarcasm, his first
victim, lured into the Machiavellian web by simple uncomplicated lust. It
couldn't happen to a greedier guy. Jason had known him for ten years, ever
since he did his FDA stories, for which the ambitious young lawyer had been the
principal source. The publicity had paid off and Arthur had clawed his way up
the greasy pole to be named a counselor to the President, one of two
gatekeepers. In Washington, that was prime power. Arthur Fellows had made it.
As such, he was a perfect potential victim.
Arthur arrived at the townhouse door, briefcase in hand, as
if he were just another hustling government lawyer. From his car, Jason had
watched him approach. There was a hawklike look about him, a sense of alert
caution. The horny bastard knew the risks. He'd gotten away with it for years. He
didn't take many chances. And he trusted Jason. Dumb bastard, Jason thought.
Jason had discovered Arthur's propensity to womanize ten
years ago when he was sleeping with his secretary at FDA. It wasn't an uncommon
development for a rising government lawyer who had just graduated to an office
with a couch. Sexual harassment as an issue was not yet in vogue. Arthur was
married to a very conventional woman, had two achieving children and a house in
McLean. They had exchanged family dinners with the Martins in the days when
Jason was being helpful. Later, of course, when Arthur's career skyrocketed,
the Martins were no longer social equals. It was the Washington way, although
Jason retained Arthur as a "contact," calling him periodically to
keep in touch.
Arthur was easy. He had a lascivious streak which he
cleverly masked by humor. Even in the old FDA days, he was always suggestive
when he and Jason would get together.
"I'll trade one of mine for one of yours."
Jason would kid him along. He was, after all, a prime
source.