Unfinished Business (17 page)

“Good turnout,” Nestor pronounced. “But then, under the circumstances…” He cut his eyes at Erica.

“Forgive me. My mama taught me manners, but I seem to have forgotten 'em. Nestor Hannegan, I'd like to present Ms.—Erica Johnson.” Nestor offered Erica a pale, blue-veined hand.

“Hello,” Erica said, giving him a wary smile.

To Mark's surprise the old man paused long enough to read her T-shirt, and then grimaced. He said nothing to Erica—not one single word—just quirked an eyebrow at Mark that communicated doubt as fully as if he'd spoken. The rudeness was so unlike the man's usual courtly charm that Mark felt it like a sharp poke with a stick. When he glanced down at Erica, there was a determined little smile on her face, like she'd taken the man's bad behavior as a challenge.

“Well, I suppose we should get started.” Nestor signaled to a heavyset woman, who took her place in front of a microphone and lectern. He lowered himself back into his chair.

“Oh this is going to be so much
fun,
” Erica muttered, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she took the seat closest to the end of the stage and the exit. “There's not one friendly face out there,” she added, nodding at the sea of waiting voters.

Mark glanced out at the crowd again. It was true, they did seem agitated, as though there had been a fight in the hallway and everyone was still all excited about it. More than once, he caught someone looking down at the white paper and then up at him and over at Erica.

“You're reading it wrong,” he told her, though he wasn't entirely sure that she was. “They're friendly enough. Just looks like whatever's on that paper has got them all excited.”

“They look like a lynch mob to me,” she murmured just as the heavyset woman's voice rang through the room, amplified by the public address system. She introduced Mark and explained how participants could present their questions.

When she was finished, she turned toward Mark and he stood.

He made his usual opening remarks: something about how nice it was to be home, working hard on critical issues in Washington, eager to be reelected and continue to serve, looking forward to answering their questions. He'd said it all many times over the course of the campaign, but every time, he felt a kind of jittery enthusiasm, as though he were gearing up for a marathon.

And this time, he was distracted by the response of his audience. The white paper was pulling their attention away from him and everywhere he looked, instead of interest in him or his words, he saw heads bent toward the paper or leaning toward each other to whisper covertly. Mark mentally dubbed one of the women as “whisperer-in-chief” since she bounced out of her chair while he was talking to whisper with not one, but four different others.

“I'm not sure my guest needs an introduction,” Mark finished, turning on the best of his charm as he gestured toward Erica. “Most of you saw her on the news and you already know she's hear to learn a little bit about the other side of the story.” He chuckled a bit. “Who knows, maybe a good ol' Billingham welcome could change her mind.” Then he added, just in case, “And I know you good people will give her
a welcome she won't soon forget. Now, I'm looking forward to taking your questions.”

Normally, when he finished this part there was applause. But today, he turned away from them to the sound of silence, except for the squish of the rubber tip of his cane connecting with the wood of the stage floor.

There was a long, weird pause before anyone moved. Then, as though elected by committee, the “whisperer-in-chief” took her place at one of the microphones placed strategically in the aisles.

A stocky, flat block of a person from shoulders to knees without any appreciable curves, she wore a white tank embroidered in red thread with an emblem he couldn't decipher tucked into a longish navy blue skirt. She had a wedge cut of gray hair, a masculine manner, and a surprisingly sexy, feminine voice.

“Hi. I'm Joanne Kimble. I‘m president of the Ladies United Services,” she said, not sounding hostile at all. “Your speech was…very nice, but I think we're all much more interested in what you have to say about the fax.”

“Fax?” Mark frowned. “What fax?”

“The fax. Surely you've seen it? Came through late this afternoon. I sure would like to know a little bit more about some of the things it says.”

Mark frowned toward Nestor, but the older man suddenly seemed captivated by his hands. Mark glanced toward the wings of the stage, where a couple of junior aides waited like understudies. One of them scrambled off the stage and approached someone in the audience.

“I don't know what you're talking about, Ms. Kimble. I don't think we sent around any faxes,” Mark said.

“Oh, you definitely wouldn't have
sent
this, but I'm
sure you were going to address it. We were just talking about that, wondering why you didn't bring it up. Personally, that's the only reason I'm here. I want to hear what you have to say for yourself.”

Mark frowned. “Anybody else get this fax?”

All around the room, hands lifted, most bearing the same white paper.

Mark glanced back toward Erica just as a young intern stumbled across the stage to hand him the fax.

The paper had been folded into four tight creases and pressed flat by the pressure of Bill's back pocket. Mark pulled it open slowly, his every gesture commanding the attention of every face in the quiet room. This was it: this was the response he always tried to get from an audience, and now he had it, except that it was of the morbid variety.

At the top of the fax were the words Four Things Mark Newman Doesn't Want You to Know, followed by three bullets misrepresenting his stances on three issues: veteran's affairs, abortion and national health care. Following each issue, Mark's vote on a specific senate bill was attributed. Beneath the bullets floated a black-and-white reprint of the photograph of Erica on his lap the night of the holdup. The reproduced image was fuzzy, Erica's skin seeming darker, almost receding into the dark night of the photograph's backdrop. At one edge of the paper, in the tiniest script legible, were the words “Paid for by the Campaign against Political Duplicity.”

There was no fourth bullet, and Mark began preparing a mental response that included this oversight as just one indication of why the flyer deserved no more than a trash can's attention. But a flash of a second later, he understood. The picture was the fourth bullet: the shot of Mark and Erica together, looking both
shaken and strangely content in black-and-white.

Mark glanced behind him. Nestor Hannegan wouldn't look at him; clearly, he'd known what the fax contained and had chosen to say nothing. Mark processed the betrayal quickly and put it aside for action later. He zeroed his attention on Erica, who gazed back at him, puzzlement deepening on her face. Mark sighed, running his hand over the sparse brush of his hair in annoyance.

“What crap,” he muttered, forgetting about the microphone and the packed crowd of avid listeners. “What a piece of cowardly crap…Joanne,” he drawled. “When'd you say you got this?”

“Late this afternoon. I was at the office doing some paperwork, and it was there.”

“Your fax machine the kind that records the number of an incoming call?”

“Yeah, it does that.”

Mark nodded. “I think we're gonna have to go check that out.”

Nestor rose slowly and interjected, “Well, Senator, you plan on answering the lady's question, or not?”

Every face in the room swung toward him. As Mark gazed out at them, he saw even more copies of the document making their way out of purses, pockets and notebooks and circulating the room to breathe the breath of understanding on the few ignorant and unwashed. Mark winced as the heavy woman who had introduced him passed a copy down to Erica, murmuring something gentle and sympathetic that Mark didn't quite catch.

He watched her face as she read it, its meaning and implications registering only in the deep lift of her chest as she inhaled. Her lashes dropped over her eyes for a moment before she raised her eyes to his face. They expressed a devastating hurt that struck
his heart more completely than a million tears.

“Now I understand what was going on in this room as I was speaking a few moments ago,” Mark said at last. “I was talking sincerely about elevating political discourse. I was talking about trying to outline a new plan, a new premise and a new reputation for our state. And you were waiting for me to respond to this…crap. So here it is.”

Mark slid off the stool, limped over to Erica and snatched the flyer from her hand. He frowned at it, and then ripped it deliberately in half, from top to bottom, then again and again until it was a handful of confetti. He tossed the shreds into the air and let them fall around him like rain.

A sole pair of hands came together in slow, deliberate applause. Mark turned.

Erica. She was pounding her palms together, her face a grim mask. A fragment of a second later, someone deep in the crowd joined in, followed by another pair of hands, and then another. A blink later, and the room exploded into assertive applause, punctuated by an occasional whoop of support.

“This is the kind of garbage, the kind of crap,” he shouted over the clamor, “that has turned millions of Americans away from participation in the political process. This kind of crap shames us as Americans, degrades our democracy. And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of appeals to our paranoia…and our prejudice. I'm sick of faxes full of lies and inaccuracies and misrepresentations calculated to hurt. I'm sick of accusations from organizations too afraid to make their presence known in the light of day. And most of all, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that innocent people—good, caring, sincere people like my friend Ms. Johnson—get caught in the crossfire of what we call our political system.”

He shook his head.

“I said to you earlier that I wanted to change that for our state. That I wanted to do something radically different. And as much as I hate everything that piece of paper stands for, I guess I ought be glad for it. And I ought to thank Ms. Kimble there and Nestor Hannegan and all of you for putting it out before us so we can all see—see the kind of garbage that's become politics as usual in this country. We can see it and make a decision. We can engage it, we can fall into the trap of punch and counterpunch. We can go dig up dirt on the other guys and lob it around until we're all smeared with mud. Or we can take the high ground.” He paused. “I've already decided what ground I'm taking. But it takes you choosing with me. It takes you being willing to say with me, ‘Enough is enough,' and mobilizing with me to make the changes real. And if we don't do this, we're going to end up with the kind of candidate—the kind of senator, the kind of state—that earns the favor of the dubious organization that put out that thing. Or…we can stay focused on the issues. We can disagree as people of good conscience sometimes do, but at least we're shooting straight. We're sticking to the task at hand.”

The words were met with a smattering of applause.

“Now does anyone have any real questions?” Mark demanded, barely realizing that he'd slipped into a voice of near-military command. “Questions about how we can work together to make this state—and this nation—great?”

Other acclamations and assents scattered the room along with a buzz of satisfied commentary. Heads bent toward each other muttering anew, but this time, the whispers earned him smiles and nods and the suggestion of favor. He was about to continue, to
launch an encore of his bid for their support when a rangy-looking man in pair of bib overalls approached one of the microphones.

“Well, I don't disagree with you, Senator.” The word was missing the central vowel, coming out “sen'tor,” as though the man's tongue refused to be hurried. “Not one bit. An', for what it's worth, I think I could really get behind you. I like what you've got to say, and the way you say it.”

“Thank you. Your support is no small thing.”

The man nodded, acknowledging the truth of those words with an easiness that contradicted his dress and manner.

“Well, you might can have it. But see”—he lowered his weatherbeaten face to the toes of his dusty black boots—“thing is, much as I don't like that flyer, if I come out for you, folks is gonna ask me about the stuff that's written on it.” He looked up at Mark then, penetrating him with a pair of clear blue eyes. “I gotta be able to give them an answer. A better answer than ‘politics as usual,' if you know what I mean. You got to give folks credit. Folks is smart enough to think that's just a dodge—to think that you ain't answering because you can't answer.” He shuffled his feet slightly, apparently simultaneously shuffling words in his brain. “You gotta give me what I need to respond to 'em,” he continued at last. “To persuade 'em that you oughta be their senator again this time around. You get me?”

Mark nodded. He got it. The old farmer wanted to know what was up.

“Fair enough.” Mark leaned close to the microphone, making ready for the real work of the night. “Ask me anything you want to know about what's on that paper—anything about my record in the Senate, anything about my background or my experi
ence—and I'll answer it, fully and truthfully.” He paused. “But don't ask me to comment on things that involve Ms. Johnson. I don't think it's right for me to comment on anything that affects her until I've had a chance to talk with her about it. After all”—he looked around the room—“she's not running for Senate. I am. Can we do that?”

In most faces he read eager assent, but more than a few eyes strayed to Erica as though withholding their agreement until receiving a response—no matter how small—from her. He watched her assess the faces—mostly white faces—peering expectantly at her from every corner of the room, her expression kaleidoscoping emotion.