In This Rain (38 page)

Dark-clothed mourners were scattered among the pews, clustering up front and thinning out toward the rear. Ann spotted Irene, Beth, and Shondi under a row of glowing stained-glass windows.

“Hey, girl,” Irene whispered as Ann slid into the pew. “How’s it going? Looking any better?”

Ann shook her head. Looking a lot worse, actually, she thought. But saying that would bring a new surge of sympathy, new offers to help. Her friends’ loyalty made her feel like a thief.

Irene patted Ann’s hand. Ann was saved from having to respond by the swelling of organ music. Ann had never liked the organ; it was cheap, she thought. Those deep-earth rumblings, those piping angels’ reeds: the sounds themselves could stir the soul, whether the music was good or bad.

As the hymn went on, talk faded, fidgeting ended. Ann had the odd sense of having, after all, wandered into the wrong chapel. It seemed unreal, this gravity of music and stained glass, all these solemn people. What could they have to do with Jen, who exasperated her friends with her flakiness and made them love her for her laughing audacity and her refusal to judge?

The minister took the pulpit and Jen’s family filed in from the side chapel. And Ann, so used to seeing in her mind the next step and the one after, so used to living as much where she was going as where she was, felt the life and movement around her recede without warning until she found herself still, directionless: becalmed on a wide, windless sea. Nothing moored her, but nothing suggested a direction to travel in; there was not even the haphazard help of a random breeze. The people, colors, lights, and music seemed both sharp and distant, as though she were observing them from afar. As though, now that she’d finally stopped moving, she was not here, not anywhere.

“Honey, are you okay?” Irene whispered. “You’re white as a ghost.”

There could be no way of explaining this alarming sensation to Irene, not even of describing it. Ann, at a loss for an answer and groping for one, was confused to hear Irene say, “Oh, my God! Now I get it. Oh, girl!” Irene put an arm around Ann’s shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. Ann, bewildered, turned to look at her, but Irene’s glare was fixed on something ahead. Ann followed her gaze, and suddenly the room snapped back into substance and the moment took on direction. Settling himself in the front pew next to Jen’s mother and brothers, distinguished and respectful in a fine black suit, was Walter Glybenhall.

Sutton Place

Ann heard none of the sermon, hymns, or tributes. Not even Shondi’s, though something Shondi said brought a soft laugh to the chapel; the sound scraped on Ann’s nerves like a knife. Ann’s cheeks, her scalp, the backs of her hands were flaming. She knew from the way Irene kept glancing at her that her white-water turbulence was visible but there was nothing she could do. As Jen’s oldest friend she’d been expected to speak and she’d intended to, planning to say something about sunshine, but she shook her head when the minister sent her a questioning look. He nodded his sympathy and called one of Jen’s brothers to lead a prayer.

Finally the service was over. The organ started up again, setting Ann’s teeth on edge. Jen’s mother, supported by her sons, made her way from the chapel. Cousins and uncles followed, and then everyone was freed. Ann sprang to her feet. “It was him!” she hissed to Irene. “That son of a bitch was the new boyfriend!”

Irene blinked. “Who?”

“Who? Walter Glybenhall! That hypocritical bastard! He killed her and now he sits there consoling her mother!”

“Honey, get a grip. What do you— ”

“Don’t tell me to get a grip! He’s rich, he’s famous, he’s a horny old fossil. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before!”

“Ann! Damn, girl, chill. Even if he was Jen’s boyfriend, that doesn’t mean he killed her.”

“He did.”

“And he may not be,” Irene argued. “They move in the same circles, don’t they? Like you and her? Couldn’t he just have known them forever?”

“That would make him want her more.” She shook off Irene’s grip.

On the sidewalk she waited near the row of black limos. She was sweating, her heart racing. When she saw Jen’s mother come out of the funeral home, her back stiffened. When Walter came out moments later, she stepped into his path.

Eyeing her with distaste, he said, “What are you doing here, Ann?”

“Jen was a friend of mine.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. It’s a sad thing to lose a friend.”

“You killed her, Walter.”

“What?”

“You were sleeping with her and you murdered her. And I’ll prove it.”

He shook his head. “Ann, my beautiful Ann. Had you not said so many enormously stupid things over the last few weeks, I’d be astonished by both your dementia and your boorish timing. While you focus on your own miserable obsession, people around you are grieving. Perhaps you might give a thought to them?”

“Walter,” she said tightly, “you set me up. It took me forever but I have the pieces now. I don’t know how Jen’s death fits but I’ll find out. When I do— ”

“When you do it will be a cold day in hell. It amazes me that I’m even responding to your fantastic accusation, except to prevent the embarrassment of this scene from growing. Please hear this: I had nothing whatever to do with Jennifer’s death. I never had a relationship with the poor child, except as a dear friend of her mother’s.”

“If you were sleeping with her mother, you’d have wanted Jen too.”

“My God,” he breathed. He held up his hand to someone behind her, instructing them to wait. And they would. They’d do as Walter Glybenhall told them, the way everyone always did. “Ann,” he said. “I’m going to assume the loss of a dear friend is causing this fresh bout of instability, and I will forgive you.” He turned.

She lunged for him, seizing only his jacket, nothing of substance. “Walter! Don’t think you can— ”

A hand clamped her arm. “Honey, stop it now!” Irene whispered fiercely.

Walter’s jacket slipped from Ann’s grip. In a voice of gentle sympathy, he said, “Please accept my condolences on your loss.” Smiling, he slipped into the waiting limo beside Jen’s mother.

City Hall

Louise’s wineglass clouded up as her chardonnay was poured. That made the second frosty thing on her side of the table, Charlie thought. He held his hand over his own glass and shook his head. The waiter put the bottle on ice and discreetly retreated, leaving Charlie and Louise alone in the mayor’s private dining room.

“You’re not drinking?” Louise asked.

“I don’t very much lately, in the middle of the day.”

“Oh. That’s a change. I suppose I hadn’t noticed because until recently you haven’t often been available for such an intimate little lunch.”

“When people were willing to be seen with me, you mean.”

She set her glass down. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“This will pass.”

“Darling, this will not ‘pass.’ You might improve the situation by taking action, though even that might not work. But certainly if you do nothing this will not pass. It will destroy you.”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“Yes, you said that last week. When your approval rating was six points higher than it is now.”

“The teachers’ union— ”

“This has nothing to do with the teachers’ union!” Louise’s eyes blazed. “Two months into your first term the sanitation workers struck and your ratings went up. Do you remember? People didn’t like the piles of garbage but they liked you! You said you were sorry but the union’s demands were unreasonable and it would take as long as it took. You led the news cameras to the garden and showed them Gracie Mansion’s garbage bags. And everyone adored you. You can be pigheaded, wrong, and stupid and the voters will love you, darling, but you cannot appear conniving and petty. You just look nasty, and like a fool. Other mayors have been admired for their ability to flimflam but you never will be, Charlie, never.”

“It’s a dubious talent, anyway.”

“Don’t give me that. If you had it you’d use it.” Louise attacked her Stilton-and-watercress salad.

Charlie bit into his crab cake, surprised to find himself wondering if that was true. He rarely questioned Louise’s political assessments, of him or anyone else. And bullshitting people— flimflamming, in Louise’s tasteful idiom— was an ability he’d never spent much effort to develop. But if he could? If he’d been born with the gift of humbug? Was he different from other politicians because he refused to lie to his constituents? Or only because he didn’t know how?

“In any case, it’s what we built your career on,” Louise said, as though he’d spoken aloud. “People expect to see you acting straight with them.”

To see me acting straight. An odd turn of phrase, Charlie thought.

“Now it looks like you and Ford Corrington conspired to screw Walter. And you just want to sit there and let it melt away. But it won’t. Voters don’t mind being lied to by a liar, but they won’t put up with it from an honest man.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“We already talked about it.” She didn’t bother to hide her annoyance. “You’ve got to cut Corrington loose. Make it look like that deal you had Sue leak— and I wish you hadn’t done that, Charlie— was Corrington’s idea, his end run around the public process.”

“You wish we hadn’t leaked it, or hadn’t made it?”

“Both! I wish you’d stood behind Walter.”

“Walter was about to be arrested for insurance fraud and murder.”

Louise stabbed a forkful of salad and chewed as though it were her watercress she was furious with.

“Anyway,” Charlie said, “Ford Corrington’s in trouble with his own people already. It dirtied him up, to look like he was sneaking around with me.”

“All the more reason. Maybe we could pick up some new supporters. People Ford’s upset over the years.”

“He could lose the Garden Project.”

“You could lose the governorship.”

“That foundation would fold without him.”

“There are other charities. We’ll choose one and make a big donation. If you want Walter and his friends back, you’ve got to offer up a sacrifice. This is the only message they’ll understand.”

Charlie looked at Louise, glossy black hair, shining blue eyes, anger adding a beautiful rose glow to her skin. Behind her, sunlight sparkled through deep green leaves. Louise, of course, could see none of this: nothing was in her line of sight but his tired face and the mayoral suite.

He said, “I’ll never get Walter back.”

“No, not publicly. His pride’s too wounded.”

“You’re buying that?”

“But”— she gave him a cold look— “what you might get, if you work for it, is his quiet word in the ears of his friends. ‘Fewer rules and regs’ is still their best choice to protect their interests. They’ll throw their weight your way for governor if they feel you understand where this all went wrong.”

“If I crawl.”

“If you admit your mistake!”

“My mistake was making a dirty deal with Walter. That’s not what ‘fewer rules and regs’ was supposed to be about, and that’s where this went wrong.”

“Walter? Walter’s the victim here.”

“Only in terms of fact. Not moral intention.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Charlie! Are you saying because no one meant to screw Walter except that insane DOI woman, he’s not a victim?”

“No. I’m saying the least sorry person in New York that any of this happened is Walter.”

“How can you say that? He was led through the streets in handcuffs!”

“And look at him now. He’s got every last city department and regulatory agency by the balls and we’re about to settle with him for millions. I’m beginning to think you could throw Walter off a cliff and it’d turn out to be the fastest way down to a gold mine.”

“Walter’s been a good friend to you, Charlie.”

“Dammit, Louise!” Charlie clanked his fork to his plate. “Walter would’ve screwed me, you, the dog, and the cat any time in the last ten years if it would’ve gotten him something he wanted. And he’d kiss my ass in Macy’s window this very afternoon if there were something in that for him.”

Louise regarded him with that neutral, appraising look he knew so well, that look she fixed on strangers. “You’re not going to do it, are you?”

“Do what? Hang Ford Corrington out to dry? No. I’m not.”

“It’s the only way, Charlie.”

“The only way for what?”

Slowly and with the precise enunciation of the finishing schools she’d attended while he was at Stuyvesant, she said, “The only way you will ever be Governor of the State of New York.”

“I hope that’s not true.”

“It is.” Her blazing eyes gave him another familiar look, the one she used to finish people off. “And what’s more, you know it is. I can see it on your face. Corrington, or Albany. You’re as sure as I am.”

Sutton Place

“Drink your latte and stop seething,” Irene ordered Ann.

“I can’t just sit here!”

“You can’t get up and carry on like a crazy woman, either. Drink, calm down, and let’s talk about it.” The four of them were clustered around a tiny table in a crowded café.

“There’s nothing to talk about. He killed Jen.”

“Why? As part of this whole plot, this whole setup?”

“I’m sorry I ever told you guys about that. None of you believe me, do you?”

Shondi said gently, “I think we’d all like to. I know you wouldn’t make up something like that. But it seems so

far-fetched.”

“Forget about it. I don’t give a damn. He probably got off on that from the beginning, knowing no one would believe me, if the light finally dawned. Bastard! He probably planned to tell me about it just to make sure I knew who won. But he’s not going to win. I swear to God I’m going to destroy him.”

“If you go anywhere near him now,” Irene said, “he’ll have you arrested.”

“I don’t care! He doesn’t own the world, no matter what he thinks! Everyone says he can’t be stopped, but I’m going to stop him.”

“What you said to him,” Irene said carefully, “about wanting Jen if he’d slept with her mother— ”

“Forget it.”

“Honey— ”

“I said forget it. I don’t want to talk about it. If you’re going to help me, fine. If not, see you later.”