Deadline (6 page)

I watched him go in the direction of the elevators, back to a life where the silence of a telephone meant the end of the world. I wondered how much I could really help Joe Allardyce.

I walked to my desk and buzzed Jane. The door of my office opened almost immediately and Jane ushered two people inside. A plump, cheerful man flashed an ID card and introduced himself as James Brunton, a special investigator attached to the White House. The other visitor called herself Carrie Vasuu; she was blond and pretty in a sharp-edged way, dressed in a tight black skirt and matching double-breasted jacket. Her ID had been issued by the White House; a presidential aide. She and Brunton had bulky briefcases.

‘Short notice,' Brunton said. ‘I apologize.'

Carrie Vasuu said, ‘Sometimes we have to do things in a hurry, Dr Lomax.'

‘Apparently,' I said.

‘You're unhappy with the intrusion,' she said.

‘I'm less than delighted.'

‘We'll be fast,' Brunton said and smiled. ‘In and out. I promise you.'

I looked at my watch. ‘It's about Emily Ford, I guess.'

‘Yep,' Brunton said.

10.47 a.m.

They were in Los Angeles, as Brunton phrased it, ‘to tie up a few loose ends', which involved going over a couple of things Emily Ford had discussed with senior presidential aides in Washington. The President, Brunton said, was ‘almost certain' to nominate her for the position of Attorney-General.

‘Barring a skeleton in the closet,' he added.

‘We've all got a few bones somewhere,' I said. I didn't like him. I didn't like his smile, the cheerfulness that struck me as forced. He was a back-slapper, the kind of guy who forced drink on people at parties and pretended he was the spirit of generosity, dispensing largesse.

Carrie Vasuu, whose eyes were the blue of a Lapland summer sky, looked directly at me. ‘I'll be straight,' she said, in a way that suggested she was never straight with anyone. ‘The President doesn't want Congress to bite him on this nomination. He's had nominations rebuffed before and he doesn't like the flack. So we're here to check out a few things.'

I glanced at Carrie Vasuu's long, suntanned legs. I couldn't help myself. Her short, tight skirt was slut couture, and expensive.

‘Go ahead,' I said.

Carrie Vasuu said, ‘We assume you're aware of Ford's position on crime – especially those crimes related to narcotics?'

‘I don't keep up with what she says in public,' I remarked.

‘You know she advocates mandatory prison sentences for the private use of recreational drugs –'

‘I'd heard,' I said. ‘The Dragon Lady.'

Brunton smiled at me thinly. ‘Which riles some of our elected officials of a more liberal persuasion. Emily Ford is on record as saying that even a high-school kid caught with a single reefer should do time.'

‘I don't believe everything I read, Ms Vasuu. In any case, I don't see how this has anything to do with me. I'm not interested in her policies.'

Carrie Vasuu held a hand up, a cop stopping the flow of traffic. ‘Let me finish first, Dr Lomax. She's
also
on record as favoring mandatory life sentences for dealers, no plea-bargaining. She claims too many lawyers are doing too many questionable deals with overworked DAs in smoky back rooms.' She took a folder from her briefcase, opened it, and read from a notebook. ‘Let me quote her, Doctor. This is from an interview that appeared in the
LA Examiner:
“Too many bad guys are walking free, or they're serving Disneyworld sentences, twelve months and three off for good behavior. Everybody knows the system needs to be totally revamped. I want an America that's free of dope dealers. I want the streets swept clean.” End of quote.'

‘I still don't see where I come into this,' I said. But I did. I knew where it was leading. ‘So far as I can tell, she's only echoing what a lot of people feel in this country: Dope pushers shouldn't be able to do deals with prosecutors. They ought to expect punishment.'

Carrie Vasuu asked, ‘Is that your own view too, Dr Lomax?'

I shook my head. ‘No. I don't think you can impose mandatory life sentences willy-nilly. Every case is different.'

She had found more papers and was glancing at them. ‘Here's some of Ford's wish-list: More federal and state prisons, more prison guards. Border patrol increased by thirty to forty per cent. Another one hundred thousand policemen nationwide. A multi-million dollar Organized Crime Task Force controlled by the Attorney-General, with the emphasis on combatting drug trafficking. Special investigators answerable only to the AG … it amounts to a private fiefdom, it makes her damn near unaccountable. She can yank up the drawbridge of her little castle any time she doesn't like the sound of the rabble outside. A lot of people in Congress are going to find her desire to build her own domain a problem.'

‘Which leaves the President high and dry if her nomination's a failure,' I said.

‘It sure does,' Carrie Vasuu said. ‘Some people in the President's own party … well, they feel he's made an enormous mistake with Emily Ford. They think it's a knee-jerk reaction to the anti-drug voices that come from certain pockets of the populace, Dr Lomax. Rabid voices.'

‘But voters all the same,' I said.

‘Exactly,' she replied. ‘The Christian Coalition, the Baptists, the Mormons, the plain old Bible Belters – they all mark their ballots. I'm not espousing drugs, and I'm not indulging the drug culture we have in this country, but some influential people in the party believe you cannot have the kind of laws Emily Ford wants, because in the end they just don't work. They remember Prohibition.'

Brunton coughed into his rolled-up fist. ‘I'd like to move on into other areas. More personal ones.'

I'd been waiting for this shift. This was why they were here in my office.

Brunton said, ‘I'm looking for anything that might embarrass her if it became public knowledge.'

I said, ‘Embarrass the President, you mean.'

‘If you like,' Carrie Vasuu said, and took from her briefcase a loose-leaf binder with a red cover. She flicked a couple of pages. ‘She came to see you soon after the unfortunate matter of her parents, I believe.'

‘Unfortunate' was a word so timid as to be offhand, even callous, in the context of Emily Ford's parents. ‘I'd have to check my appointment books from back then,' I said. ‘This didn't happen only yesterday, you know.'

‘A ballpark estimate will do.'

‘OK. It might have been a year after her parents were killed that she made her first appointment.'

Carrie Vasuu said, ‘Some people have suggested that the tragedy of her parents colored her views on law enforcement to a point beyond objectivity. That her views are rooted in a desire for personal vengeance. That her life is an obsessive vendetta.'

‘I'm not sure I agree with any of that.'

‘No? You don't think the experience hardened her? She goes to visit with her parents. She finds them slain. A few weeks later, the cops arrest a known addict and felon called Billy Fear for the crime. Some people say she lost all her objectivity about crime and punishment when her parents were murdered by a junkie who needed ten bucks for a quick fix. Some say that event shaped her whole philosophy.'

Billy Fear. That name dragged me back into places I had no desire to go. I said, ‘She wasn't exactly the soul of liberal thinking before the tragedy, was she? She was always tough on crime. Does the murder of her parents make her unworthy of the nomination?'

‘It makes her judgments suspect,' Carrie Vasuu said. ‘They're colored, they're not detached.'

I remembered our sessions. I recalled how Emily Ford had described her parents' ranch-style house and how hushed it had been that fall evening in 1994. The porch-light was burning, there was the scent of dead leaves smoking somewhere in the neighborhood, it had all seemed so ordinary. She'd entered by the front door; a desk-lamp lay upturned on the floor and sent light spilling weirdly across the carpet. And then she'd found her father, face down in the kitchen, surrounded by food that had fallen from the dog's dish, little brown nuggets splattered with his blood. The mongrel was curled in the corner, also shot. She had walked in dazed terror through the rooms of the house until she found her mother on the second floor, shot through the back of the head, her purse open and upturned on the bed, credit cards and driver's license spread all around, no sign of any money.

I remembered how difficult it had been to draw this out of her, and how deeply she'd buried the whole sequence of events. I recalled her rage, the resistance of her memory to my probing, the struggle it had been for her to accept hypnosis. And I remembered the breakthrough, even if I preferred to consign it to the dead-letter office of memory.

‘What kind of treatment did you give her?' Brunton asked.

‘You know better than to ask that,' I said.

Carrie Vasuu had the eyes of an interrogator; polar bears might have frolicked in her arctic inquisitor's heart. ‘Drugs? Electrotherapy?'

‘I taught her the best way I knew to deal with shock. I taught her some relaxation techniques. That's all I'm prepared to say.' I saw it clearly: Carrie Vasuu wanted to believe Emily's mental state was still fragile. She wanted this nomination to be withdrawn and forgotten. She was protecting the President.

‘Did she talk about how she behaved when Billy Fear was gunned down by some fellow junkie after he'd been acquitted on a technicality?' Brunton asked.

‘I don't remember. I don't want to seem rude, but are we finished?'

‘Can you give us some assessment of her mental condition now?' Carrie Vasuu said. ‘Or do your
ethics
prevent you?'

I didn't like the snide emphasis she gave the word ethics. ‘I haven't seen her professionally in several years.'

‘In your opinion, is she fit to hold high office?'

I hesitated. I wanted to say
Without doubt
, but I couldn't hurry the words from brain to mouth.

Carrie Vasuu asked, ‘Well? Is she or isn't she? I'm holding my breath.'

Before I could answer, the telephone on my desk rang. I picked up the handset, glad of the interruption.

The voice on the line wasn't Jane's. It was Sondra's, and it was strident with panic. Her words ran together, a collision of sounds. I'd never heard her talk this way, and my heart lurched inside my chest like a great bird leaping suddenly upward. ‘I don't know where I am, Jerry. Come get me. Can you come get me, please, oh please –'

‘Sondra, what's the problem? What's happened? Where are you? Take your time, go slow, talk slow. Has there been an accident? Are you hurt? Is it the baby?'

The line was dead.

I dropped the handset on my desk and hurried into the reception area, shutting my office door behind me.

Jane was staring at me. ‘She sounded in a bad way, Jerry. What's wrong? Is she sick? Is there something I can do to help?'

‘Did she say where she was calling from?'

‘No –'

One of the telephones on Jane's desk rang and she picked it up, then handed the receiver to me. The voice I heard was that of a man I didn't recognize. ‘You want to see your wife again, go outside, take a right, walk three blocks. Go inside a bar called The Punch Bowl. Got that? You'll be contacted at eleven-thirty.'

‘What is all this?' I asked. ‘A joke –'

‘A joke? What kind of world do you live in, Lomax? Just do what I tell you and skip the dumb questions. And one other thing – keep this to yourself. Remember, we've got your wife.'

‘You've got my wife? What is that supposed to mean?'

‘What does it sound like to you, Lomax? You open your mouth in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I can't guarantee her safety. Clear?'

‘Who the hell are you?' The line was dead. I was railing at nothing, nobody.

Jane wadded a Kleenex nervously in her fist. ‘What's going on, Jerry? Has something happened to Sondra?'

I looked at my watch. It was just after eleven. ‘Cancel my appointments for the day. Also my lunch with Harry Pushkas. Tell those White House goons I was called away. Emergency. I don't care what.'

‘Where are you going?'

I didn't answer. I moved out into the hallway, walked to the elevator, pressed the
Call
button. My mind was upside-down. It was a joke, it had to be, what else could it be? Old Harry Pushkas, practical joker, had dreamed it up:
Let's knock Jerry sideways, keep him from getting all smug and complacent and shrink-like. Play with his head a little.
But I couldn't see Sondra going along with a joke like this. It wasn't her style.

And yet it had been Sondra on the phone, different-sounding, sure, but Sondra all the same. Panicky, scared:
Please oh please come find me.

I tried to stay calm while I waited for the elevator, but then I realized from the light-panel that it was stuck way below on the second floor. I hurried to the stairs and took them two or three at a time, my feet clattering on stone; when I reached the foyer I was hyperventilating, and sick to the bottom of my heart with dread.

11.11 a.m.

The man who came across the foyer towards me was about six feet tall and wore his hair thickly gelled and flattened back against his skull, a style that had been popular in the late '80s and early '90s, usually accompanied by a double-breasted linen suit.

‘Dr Lomax?' he asked, and introduced himself as Detective Petrosian of the LAPD, flashing his ID quickly in front of me. At first I imagined he must be here on account of Sondra, that he had some information to relay, that he was going to tell me she was safe.

But that wasn't it at all.

‘You reported an incident last night,' he said. He had very thin lips, almost like two lengths of purple twine. ‘An attack.'