Atropos Read online

  “There’s the phone,” Ainley said. “Call the fire department. Give your name. Report the fire.”

  “But, Ainley, the fire department was just getting there when I left. I thought it was the police, that’s why I ran, but I realize now—”

  “You ran because you were obsessed with calling the fire department,” Ainley said. “You’re so agitated, you aren’t thinking straight.”

  “That’s the truth,” Hank said. “Can I have a drink?”

  “After you make the call. Maybe. As soon as you call, I’ll get the family lawyers busy.” Ainley had gone to Harvard Law at Gramps’s expense, and had passed the bar years ago, but he had never practiced law. His brain was too valuable to waste in court, or in drawing up documents.

  Ainley handed Hank the phone. “Call,” he commanded. “Your name, and the address of the fire. Nothing else. Just hang up.”

  Hank made the call. The dispatcher had tried to ask questions, but Hank pretended not to hear them. He turned to Ainley. “Was that okay?”

  “That was fine, Hank, especially with the strain you’re under. You know, I can guess exactly what happened tonight.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  Ainley was stern. “Don’t tell me. I’ll guess. You and Miss Girolamo and a few others?”

  Hank nodded.

  Ainley nodded back, as if he’d expected that. “And a few others worked late. You drove Miss Girolamo to the house the campaign has provided for her. You left her there, and headed for your own home. On the way, you realized there was a document you’d forgotten to give her, something to do with the upcoming campaign. You have such a document in your car right now, don’t you, Senator?”

  “I’ve got neighborhood income breakdowns, but—”

  “Neighborhood income breakdowns. It was important she have them, an important addition to her duties. You turned back to bring them to her. When you got there, you smelled smoke. You went inside—the door was unlocked—and called her name, but there was no answer. The smell of smoke was stronger. You went through the house, fighting flames and smoke, looking for her. It was a terrible risk, but the Van Horns inspire loyalty by giving it.

  “You couldn’t find Miss Girolamo. You knew the fire department was needed, but by the time you made your way out of the house, you were so dazed by heat and smoke that you were temporarily at a loss as to what to do.

  “The approach of the fire department—or at least the sirens and the distant lights, you didn’t actually see any fire trucks, did you?”

  Hank shook his head.

  “Good, good,” Ainley said, like a doctor listening to a patient’s chest. “The siren and lights, without registering on your conscious mind, reminded you subconsciously of your resolve to call the fire department. In your confused state, it never occurred to you to ask to use a stranger’s phone, and you didn’t want to take time to find a public phone. So you came here.”

  Ainley regarded him blandly. “Does that sound about right, Senator?”

  Hank took a few seconds to repeat the story to himself. Ainley was amazing. Of course, the image of the Van Horns always being in control was going to be shaken, but Hank was sure Gramps, wherever he was, would look down and forgive him. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate.

  “Senator?”

  “Yes, Ainley. That’s exactly what happened. To the letter.”

  “It’s a talent I have. I can put myself in another person’s place. Let me get myself presentable, and we’ll go to the fire department and talk to the press. Are you ready?”

  “I will be,” Hank promised.

  “Don’t get too calm. You’ve had a terrible experience.”

  I certainly have, Hank thought.

  “And don’t get too rattled, either. This is going to be sticky. Most of the press loves you, but they’ll latch on to this like a terrier and shake. Be contrite. Mourn her as a worker and a friend. Get indignant over suggestions of anything improper.”

  “Of course, Ainley.” Hank was feeling better already. He could do this. Once someone gave him a program, he could stick to it and look good in the process. He was almost eager to get on with it.

  While he was changing, Ainley called from the bedroom. “Oh. And, Senator, you have a talent I admire.”

  Hank was surprised; it was so rare for Ainley to admit admiring anything. “What’s that?”

  “Timing. On any other day, this would be the news story of the decade. Now it will get just a corner of the front page.”

  “Why?” Hank knew it was silly, but he was almost disappointed.

  Ainley reappeared, knotting his tie. He smiled sardonically. “I take it back,” he said. “It’s not your timing I admire, it’s your luck. I’ve got this from Washington, absolutely solid. Nixon’s resigning the Presidency at noon tomorrow. Come on, let’s go.”

  Ainley was reaching for the doorknob when Hank grabbed his hand. “Ainley, is this going to work?”

  “Why not?” Ainley said. “It’s worked before.”

  Ainley, as usual, had been right. It was sticky. It was a lot worse than sticky. At times, it was agonizing. There was an autopsy (inconclusive—too little soft tissue remained unburned). There was interrogation by fire marshals and policemen. They’d learned the fire had been started by the space heater.

  Senator, why would someone be using a space heater on a warm August night?

  For one suicidal moment, when a fire marshal first asked him that question, Hank had been tempted to make up an answer. Then he’d realized that this was a matter about which an innocent man would be completely ignorant. He proclaimed his ignorance, indignantly.

  But Ainley was also right about his other assertion—the story worked. Eighty percent of the ranking police and fire officials in the state owed something to the Van Horns, as did ninety-five percent of the judges, and a goodly number of the journalists. Most of the rest could see the futility of mixing it up with that kind of power over one little Italian-American social climber. The few remaining were easy to paste a label on—vindictive bastards who were out to smear, not only a Good Man and a dedicated public servant, but worse, an innocent young girl who could no longer defend herself.

  A lot of that labeling was done by Mr. and Mrs. Aogostino Girolamo, recently retired from the gray, industrial town of Irondale, downstate from the capital, to a lovely condominium in Boca Raton, Florida, courtesy of a sympathetic Van Horn family. In the expressed opinion of Mrs. Girolamo, Senator Henry Van Horn was “a saint,” and their Giuseppina had been blessed to know him.

  So while there were some sneers, especially out of state, when the inquest ruled Death by Misadventure in the case of Josephine Ann Girolamo, there was a minimum of harm done. Some said it might have cost the Senator any future chance at the White House, but the Van Horns, unlike some political dynasties, knew the White House was not an essential base of operations for steering the country in the direction you wanted it to go.

  After all, Hank was reelected, and continued to be reelected, growing in seniority and power.

  Mr. Nixon was long, long gone.

  Chapter Two

  The Present—January—Kirkester, New York

  TROTTER HATED TO STOP on an even number. He pressed his back down into the bench, tightened his hands on the grips, and forced the muscles of his legs to lift the weight one more time. It was burning, tearing agony, but it had to be done. When the thirty-pound weight clanked home at the top of the hinge, Trotter was tempted to let go and let the thing crash back down, but he didn’t. He eased it down, if anything that took that much effort could have anything to do with “ease.”

  There, he thought. I should videotape these things. Let the Congressman and all the Agency doctors see he wasn’t dodging his rehabilitation. Trotter had even been given to understand that the President himself had been asking after him.

  This is what I get, he thought, for going tame.

  Trotter sat up, pulling the sweatband off his head as
he did so. As always, he held it out at arm’s length and squeezed. Liquid oozed from the top of his hand and between his fingers, fat drops of sweat that spatted loudly on the floor. He threw the sweatband across the basement of his new two-bedroom ranch, making a basket in the open top of the washer. He missed maybe one day out of six. He didn’t bother to retrieve the ones that went behind the washer.

  Trotter said, “Ah,” as he stood up. He always said “Ah” when he stood up these days. When the doctors felt like being particularly honest with him, they told him he probably always would make some kind of noise. When they were being brutal about it, they told him he’d probably be in some “discomfort” every waking hour for the rest of his life. Even a doctor being brutal doesn’t like to use the word “pain.”

  “After all,” they’d tell him, as if he’d been looking for an argument, “you were hurt very badly.”

  Yeah, Trotter thought. I remember. I was there. Thirty feet, from the catwalk to the concrete floor of the Hudson Group’s press room. Fractured skull. Ten smashed ribs. Broken hip. Three bones broken in his legs. Punctured lung. He knew all about it. That’s what he was rehabilitating himself from.

  It was even working. He hardly limped at all, now, and he had stopped using the cane weeks ago.

  He limped after these goddam workouts, though. He limped now over to the laundry area. Trotter kicked off his sneakers, slid out of his sweatpants and jock, pulled off his shirt. He threw everything but the sneakers into the washer, added soap and softener, and started the machine. When they’d first let him out of the hospital, he used to take a rueful inventory of his surgery scars every time he found himself naked; now he didn’t bother. Rehabilitating the mind, too. Trotter said, “Ah,” bent down and pulled a towel out of the dryer. He wrapped it around himself and headed upstairs.

  Going upstairs was no problem. Trotter had been surprised to discover that. It was going downstairs that was the killer, the forcing of muscles and joints to give in to gravity, but only just enough. The only times he missed the cane were when he found himself at the top of a steep flight of stairs.

  Trotter padded across the kitchen floor to the cabinet next to the refrigerator. He took out a bottle of Advil, carefully counted out six of them. Then he opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Gatorade and a jelly doughnut. He swallowed the pills, washing them down with the Gatorade.

  Forget cocaine, he thought. Ibuprofen was the new drug of choice. This dose every six hours kept the “discomfort” to a level he could manage. He could get a prescription for Motrin, which was the same stuff in bigger doses, but why bother? Hell, with his connections, he could get codeine, morphine, Demerol, stuff that would make him forget there was a thing called pain.

  Trotter didn’t want them. It wasn’t that he liked the pain. It was that he worried about what else the stuff would make him forget. Too many lives depended on the functioning of Trotter’s brain for him to mess around with it lightly. That knowledge was with him every waking moment, too. He was beginning to appreciate what the Congressman had gone through all these years.

  He caught himself thinking that, and laughed around a mouthful of doughnut. He had spent nearly half his life making vows to himself to die rather than to be like the old man, and now look at him. Things had changed.

  A lot of things had changed. For instance, he was through as a field agent. Certainly he was done with foreign work. It was very difficult slipping inconspicuously into a country when you had enough pins and plates in your body to set off every metal detector in every airport in the world. The only way he’d been able to get back to Kirkester when he’d left the hospital in Washington was with a note from his doctor and a copy of his X-rays for the benefit of airport security.

  But it wasn’t only that. There were a lot of things he’d once been able to do that he couldn’t do anymore. He couldn’t run, for one thing, or climb ropes. He had enough strength and stamina to lift that goddam weight with his legs a hundred times. A hundred and one, rather. But that was all he had. As soon as he finished, he needed pills and Gatorade and jelly doughnuts and a nice hot shower before he even felt like something worth burying.

  Trotter trudged to the bathroom. He dropped the towel, started the shower. He looked at himself in the mirror, leaning close to it, so he could see what he looked like without his glasses. He still looked gaunt, older than he ought to be. Bash kept telling him he looked fine, but Trotter wished he could fill out a little. Maybe he’d up it to two jelly doughnuts.

  Trotter tested the water, increased the heat a little, and stepped into the shower. He stood there letting the water hit him for a while before he reached for the soap.

  Of course, not all the changes had been for the worse. For the first time in his life he had a home, a place he was not likely to have to leave secretly in the middle of the night. He had a job. Two jobs. There was his bullshit cover job—Consultant to the Executive Editor of Worldwatch magazine, which was just an excuse for him to put the resources of the Hudson Group to work for him—and there was his real job—running the Agency while the Congressman completed his own rehabilitation.

  Considering the years he’d spent running from the Agency as he would a demon from hell, the job hadn’t turned out too badly. So far. Of course, that could change at any moment. He was now a top executive in the dirtiest business humans had come up with yet. The fact that the opposition had been fairly benign over the last couple of months hadn’t led him to forget that. Sooner or later, unless the Congressman recovered quickly enough to take back the reins, Trotter knew he was going to face a situation where he’d either have to do something morally repulsive, or put the country in danger. The genius, the benefactor of humanity, who could figure out a way to remove that burden from the backs of those who chose (or were forced) to shoulder it, had yet to publish his findings.

  To hell with it, Trotter thought. It was a beautiful winter’s day, and the pills and the hot water had drawn a lot of the pain away. He had a home now, and he’d stuck with one name and one face longer than he had for any other period of his adult life. He hadn’t had to kill anyone or order anyone killed in over a year. And he was in love.

  He’d never been so happy in his life.

  Chapter Three

  REGINA HUDSON LOOKED AT the numerous items still unticked on her agenda, and sent mental thanks to her mother for having hired such good people over the years. Where was Mother today? Seattle, for the Single Parents Federation Convention? No. That was last week. Today, Petra Hudson would be in Hollywood, conferring with the producer who had bought the film rights to Living It Over, Mother’s best-selling autobiography. The critics had all called the book “a fantastic story.” She wondered what they would have said if they’d known the whole story, Allan’s part in it, and the clergyman-assassin and the rest.

  Anyway, Mother’s book had contained enough of the truth to fix it so that no one’s life would ever be the same again. My own, for instance, she thought. Regina Hudson, twenty-six, was now Publisher and Chairman of the Board of one of America’s most powerful media combines. She owned it. She and her brother did, anyway. Mother had signed it over to them right after she’d gone public with her story. Jimmy, however, had never been very interested in the family business, and the ordeal they’d gone through over the Azrael affair had soured him on it for good. He was living in the Rockies somewhere under an assumed name, brooding, probably. Regina had never been one to brood.

  On the other hand, she’d never been much of a big-shot executive, either; though she’d spent her childhood watching her mother wield power, Regina sometimes found herself a little arm-weary when she tried to heft it herself.

  Still, here she was, at the head of the big oak table in the publisher’s conference room, presiding over ten grizzled journalism veterans at the latest campaign-coverage strategy session.

  “Now,” Sam Weicker said, “we got papers in all but one of the primary states. I think we ought to coordinate the magazine corre
spondents with the local papers until the field thins out a little.” Weicker was the chief accountant. He was very good at his job)—he was doing his job, now, trying to save the company money—but Regina had trouble taking him seriously. He was big and fat and loud and vulgar, and slightly greasy. Regina had a fantasy that when Sam was starting out, he had decided to fulfill a stereotype to the ultimate degree—but had somehow pulled the wrong file, and made himself into the caricature of a sportswriter rather than an accountant.

  “I’ve already had a preliminary talk with the people in Keokuk—”

  “No,” Regina heard herself say. “Absolutely not.”

  Ten sets of eyes were leveled at her. She saw resentment in some of them, amusement in others. Surprise in all.

  She looked to Sean Murphy for help. Sean was Executive Editor of the Hudson Group, recently promoted from Director of Operations. What all that meant, aside from the pay raise, was that he basically ran the show while he showed Regina the ropes. A lot of people in any business—grizzled veterans, especially—might have used that kind of setup to build an empire, to reduce the young owner, damp behind the ears and a female at that, to a figurehead.

  It never crossed Murphy’s mind. He was the one who looked like the accountant, bespectacled and slight, with hair edging from gray to white. He was just short of fifty, but his perpetually worried look made him seem older. He was quiet, and seemed shy, except on those rare occasions he took a drink. Then he had the filthiest mouth in the newspaper business.

  So the legend said, anyway. Regina had never seen him that way. She’d asked him about it once; he’d simply said he was a lot more serious about being Irish when he was younger.

  These days, he was serious about helping Regina learn her job. Now, for instance. Her glance at him had been a request to expand on her refusal to Weicker. Murphy’s response was a small smile, and a slight gesture with his hand that said, “No, no, dear lady, after you.”