Bobby rocked back and forth in his chair, thinking about Leonard Levine and the odd ways in which their paths had crossed.
“I almost forgot,”he said as I turned to leave. “Albert asked me to tell you that the governor's office called. The governor wants to see you.”
“Where? When?”
“Tonight. Six-thirty at your old hotel. He's in town for something,”explained Bobby. “That's all I know.”
Bobby came around the desk and put his hand on my shoulder. “I'm sorry I got you into this,”he said with an anxious look.
“I'm not,”I replied, surprised at how confident I sounded. “And besides, you didn't get me into it. I did.”
Bobby smiled and searched my eyes. “Maybe you're not as smart as I always thought you were.”
I was at the door when he said, “Listen, Joe, I meant what I said. I'm sorry I got you into this. You're like a kid brother to me. I don't want anything to happen to you. I don't know if you're right about Lenny or not. All I know is I want you to be careful. I'm not going to tell you how to do your job, but don't take any chances you don't have to take.”
I stayed in the office until a little after six, trying to think through the cross-examination I planned to conduct of the last witness the prosecution intended to call, but I could not concentrate. I kept thinking about Leonard Levine and the intensity of the hatred—there was no other word for it—he had felt for the man who had won the position he thought he should have had. Was there anyone whose life had been touched by Jeremy Fullerton who was not the worse for it? His wife had loved him, and look what he had done to her: made her a martyr to his own infidelity, her only comfort the perhaps fraudulent belief that he would always eventually come back to her. The astonishing thing was that she had accepted it, accepted him for what he became and perhaps had always been, and seemed to love him even more because of it. I did not know whether Meredith Fullerton was one of the greatest women I had ever known or a fool. But there was one thing about which I had no doubt at all: She had always remained faithful to him. It was the way in which she had been able all those years to remain faithful to herself. All the others, including the unfortunate Leonard Levine, forced to define themselves, at least in part, by what Fullerton had done or might yet decide to do, had not been left with even that much dignity. No wonder they all hated him so much.
At quarter past six I took a cab the short distance to the St. Francis Hotel. As I walked through the lobby, I glanced at the entrance to the bar where for several weeks I had been in the habit of having a late-night drink before I went up to my room and tried to sleep. In front of the bank of brass-door elevators, I checked the scrap of paper on which I had written the suite number and then stuffed it back in my pocket. When I reached the floor on which the governor was staying, I looked at my watch. It was six twenty-nine. Adjusting my tie, I tugged on the lapels of my suit coat and then knocked on the door.
An angular young man in his early thirties with a shock of light brown hair parted just below the center answered.
“Come in, Mr. Antonelli,”he said.
He had a flat, slightly nasal voice that made him sound a bit like a snob. Without offering his hand or bothering to introduce himself, he stepped aside. The suite was enormous and littered like the aftermath of a week-long binge. The cloying smell of alcohol and stale tobacco was everywhere. An ashtray on the coffee table was cluttered with cigar butts. Crumpled cocktail napkins and glasses full of melting ice were scattered over the top of the chrome-sided bar.
“The governor had a few people up earlier,”explained the young man with a fleeting tight-lipped smile. “Would you like something?”
I sat in the middle of a pale yellow sofa. Through the open bedroom door I could see out a window that looked over Union Square and down the narrow streets to the Bay Bridge in the distance. Standing next to the bar, the young man picked up a glass from which he had apparently been drinking and with a slight movement of his wrist jiggled the ice.
“The governor would like to know why you have put him under a subpoena.”
Slowly, I turned my head until I was looking straight into his eyes.
“I'll be glad to tell him.”
He did not blink, nor did he look away. He was young, and he was important, and if I was too stupid to know it, that was not his problem.
“I'm afraid the governor won't be able to meet with you after all,”he said without a hint of apology.
“What's your name?”I asked as I rose from the sofa.
“Cavanaugh. Richard Cavanaugh. I'm the governor's administrative assistant.”
“Well, Dick, I didn't come here because I wanted to see the governor; I came here because your office called and said the governor wanted to see me.”
“Unfortunately, the governor's schedule got changed at the last minute, and he asked me to take the meeting instead.”
I did not believe a word of it.
“You're not under subpoena, Mr. Cavanaugh,”I replied as I moved toward the door, “and I did not come here to talk to you. Next week the governor can come to see me—in court.”
“Tell me, Mr. Antonelli,”he said as I opened the door. “Did Hiram Green really tell you the governor was an 'ungrateful son-of-a-bitch' who's never even sent him a Christmas card?”
I looked back to see a derisive smile crossing Richard Cavanaugh's slightly off-center mouth.
“He was on the phone to us probably before you had reached the sidewalk in front of his office. He wanted to be sure we heard it from him first, especially the things he had said about the governor. You made his day, Mr. Antonelli. He got the chance to be important, first to you, then the governor. Hiram Green doesn't get many chances like that anymore. I'm surprised the governor even remembers his name.”
I smiled back. “From everything I've heard about the governor, so am I.”
As I rode the elevator down to the lobby, the anger I felt at the way I had been used began to dissipate. I started to think of how I was going to describe to Marissa what had happened. I knew she would find it funny and make me think it was as well. She would remind me that I had probably myself suffered from the same vain imaginings of my own importance when I was as young as the governor's insufferable assistant.
I walked through the marble-columned lobby, glancing swiftly at the people I passed and down the carpeted steps to the front entrance. My hand was pushing open the door when I changed my mind and went back inside.
“The usual?”asked the bartender as I slid onto the leather stool. I nodded and asked him how he had been.
“Fine, Mr. Antonelli,”he replied as he mixed a scotch and soda. I laid a bill on the bar.
“This one's on the house,”he said as he picked up a glass from the stainless steel sink behind the bar and began to wipe it with a towel. “It's been a while. Glad to see you back.”
At the other end of the bar a well-dressed middle-aged man was idling over a drink. At a table on the far side of the room, two women with graying hair were chatting together, several shopping bags on the floor next to them.
“Slow night,”I remarked as I took a drink.
“It'll be a mob scene later,”he said as he held the glass up for inspection. “You know how those political things are. They're having a fundraiser for the governor. Afterward, they'll all show up,”he explained with a shrug as he put the glass down.
He started to pick up another one, but instead he leaned across the bar and whispered scornfully, “The governor comes in for a drink, and they all come in. He finishes his drink and leaves, and they all leave. They're all a bunch of lemmings. No one wants to be out of step. The governor tells a joke—they all laugh. Someone says something and the governor stops smiling and they all look at the poor bastard who said it like he's got leprosy. I think the son-of-a-bitch does it on purpose—embarrasses someone like that—just to let everyone know who's in charge.”
He straightened up and picked up a glass. At the other end of the bar, the well-dressed gentleman glanced at his watch, put some money down next to the empty glass, and left.
“I would have voted for Fullerton,”said the bartender, wiping the glass clean. “He didn't play that kind of game.”
Holding up the glass, he twisted it around in his hand, admiring his work.
“When he came in that night, it was only after nearly everyone else had already left.”
I was supposed to meet Marissa for dinner and I did not want to be late. I checked my watch and started to get up.
“What?”I asked suddenly, gripping the bar. “What did you just say?”
He gave me a blank look.
“You said Fullerton came in that night. Which night? The night he was killed?”
“That's right. It was late. About half past midnight. The place had pretty well cleared out by then.”
I sat down again and bent forward.
“Was he alone?”
“No, the two of them. They sat over there,”he said, nodding toward the corner farthest away from the bar, just beyond where the two women were sitting now.
“The two of them?”
“Right. The one who worked for him; the one who's running in his place. You know—Goldman's daughter.”
“You're sure?”
“Yeah, it was her, all right. She had on a long coat, and her hair was up, and she had on dark glasses—like she didn't want anyone to recognize her. I didn't know who she was, not until later when I started seeing her picture in the papers and on television. It was her, all right.”
“How long did they stay?”I asked, wondering what it could possibly mean.
The bartender had tossed the towel over his shoulder and was leaning on his elbows. “I don't know—twenty minutes, maybe. They each had a drink, then they left.”
“Together?”
“Yeah, together.”
“Tell me this: How did they seem?”
His brittle iron-gray eyebrows lifted slightly and drew together just above the bridge of his straight thin nose.
“You mean, did they look like they were a couple of lovers? Not exactly. Something was going on between them, but whatever it was, they didn't seem too happy about it.”
“But they left together?”
“Yeah,”he replied as he turned his eyes to a couple who had just sat down at the bar.
I picked up the ten-dollar bill I had left on the bar and put a twenty in its place.
“Thanks,”I said as I turned to go.
Under the awning outside the front entrance to the hotel, I waited for a cab, wondering what Jeremy Fullerton and Ariella Goldman had been talking about late the night he was murdered and why they had come to the St. Francis instead of the Fairmont.
“Mr. Antonelli,”said a voice from somewhere just ahead of me.
I looked up and found myself under the watchful eye of a muscular, square-shouldered man wearing dark glasses and a dark blue suit. He was standing next to a black limousine. As he talked, his hand moved to the handle of the door.
“Someone would like a word with you.”
I could not see his eyes, but there was something distinctly ominous in his voice, and he was less than an arm's length away.
“And just who might that be?”I asked, glancing up the street as I got ready to run.
“See for yourself,”he said as he opened the door.
All I could see were the legs of someone sitting on the far side of the back seat. A moment's curiosity got the better of my fear. I took a half step forward and bent down to see his face. Suddenly a hand was on my arm and another one on my back. I was shoved inside and the door slammed shut behind me. I scrambled back around, reached for the handle, and in the same motion hit the door with my shoulder. The door was locked, and the car was screeching away from the curb.
S
etttled against the darkened corner of the back seat, peering at me through tiny eyes that seemed to float under the heavy eyelids of his round, full face, a man I had never seen before insisted I had no reason to be alarmed.
“I just wanted to have a little talk with you.”I looked at him in astonishment. His suit coat was unbuttoned and his white dress shirt bulged out in the middle and covered his belt. His stomach was so large that his tie looked more like a napkin he had tucked in at the collar and forgotten to remove when he finished his meal. He was so huge that for a moment I forgot that I had been taken by force and made a prisoner in his car.
“If you want to talk to me, call my office and make an appointment. Now tell your driver to stop this car and let me out immediately!”
The expression on his face did not change; or, rather, there continued to be no expression on his face at all. Perhaps there was simply too much of him to allow it. His eyes were barely visible behind the thick folds of skin that engulfed them; his mouth was burdened with so much flesh that it would have been almost impossible to detect a smile, either of benevolence or malice.
“Just relax and enjoy the ride,”he suggested. “We don't have far to go.”
My heart was beating too fast, my mind racing too far ahead; but even had I been able to, I did not want to relax. I wanted to stay angry, because I did not know how otherwise to beat back the fear that was crawling up my spine, testing, pulling at my nerves.
“All right, then,”I half shouted, “what is it you want to talk to me about?”
“About Jeremy Fullerton,”he replied with labored breath. “And about you, Mr. Antonelli.”
He seemed almost immobile, the only motion he made an endless, irritating circling of his thumbs as he moved them around each other while his hands, the other fingers clasped together, rested in his lap. The thought flashed through my mind that I could seize him by the throat and squeeze the life out of him. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the square-jawed passenger in the front seat, the one who had shoved me into the car, watching me closely in the rearview mirror.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?”I demanded, trying to keep up my courage.
His mouth was closed, and the breath that passed through his nostrils made a high-pitched sucking sound.
“Let's just say I'm an interested observer.”
“And what exactly is it you observe?”