The Nomination (7 page)

He'd have to give some thought to what he wanted to tell Larrigan before he called him.

S
imone Bonet sipped her herbal tea and gazed out through the big window at the bright rushing ribbon of water beyond the meadow at the foot of her hill. The afternoon sun was warm here in her glassed-in west-facing porch, and she had pushed the blanket off her legs. She had to be careful of overheating.

Soon the new leaves would fill the gaps in the maples and willows and the pretty stream would disappear behind the foliage, but now, in the middle of April, although the rising sap and swelling buds were turning the branches pink and yellow, the trees were still skeletal, and from her little house huddled against the Catskill hillside, Simone could still see the stream running milky and swollen with snowmelt.

Simone loved the leaves, the way the thick summertime foliage hugged her in and protected her in her little sanctuary. But she loved her view of the moving water, too.

In the Catskills, the streams were called Kills. A Dutch word, she'd been told, meaning stream or creek or river.

Simone had heard that some earnest group of animal lovers had staged a demonstration against the name of one of the creeks—the Fishkill—because they believed it promoted violence against trout. How empty their lives must be, she thought.

The newspaper clipping lay flat on the table beside her cup and saucer. The crease across its middle had started to rip from all the times she had folded and unfolded it in the past few days, trying to make up her mind.

“Abortion Doc Assassination Foiled!” blared the headline.

Jill, her best friend, her nurse, her housemate, and her lover, had brought home the paper from the dentist's office. Simone had no interest in the news, subscribed to no newspapers or magazines, didn't own a television. She'd paged through the newspaper because she rarely saw one, idly, without any interest or curiosity.

Simone Bonet didn't care about abortions or assassinations, foiled or otherwise. She no longer cared about issues or policies, wars or catastrophes, heroes or celebrities. She'd had her fill of all those things.

She was only interested in the inevitable, comforting passage of the seasons, the leafing out of the trees, the blooming of the lilacs, the arrival of the migrating songbirds, the gentle unfolding of whatever life she had left.

At least, that's how she'd felt until she saw the photo.

It wasn't the headline that had grabbed her attention.

It was the photograph of the young woman kneeling beside the abortion clinic assassin with her arm raised. Her face was alive with emotion. Simone read triumph and something like terrible agony in her expression.

The name was wrong, of course. Carol Ann Chang. Chang was a Chinese name, and anybody could see that this young woman wasn't Chinese. But her age, that was about right, Simone judged. And her eyes, Vietnamese, not Chinese, they were Simone's.

The sharp nose, the wide mouth, the curly hair, they could certainly be his.

This was May. Even after all these years, a mother would recognize her baby. Her name should be Jessie Church, not Carol Ann Chang. Simone felt it with absolute certainty. This was her child.

Simone picked up the newspaper. Her right hand trembled, causing it to flutter. It was getting worse. She took the paper in her other hand and skimmed the story again. The world-famous doctor, outspoken defender of a woman's right to choose, director of the Woman's Reproductive Center in San Francisco, celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary on that morning a few weeks earlier, the crowds, the demonstrations, the foiled assassin—a random, anonymous fanatic—and the hero, the bodyguard, Carol Ann Chang, a private investigator employed by Bay Security and Investigations of Oakland. She had subdued the armed fanatic with her bare hands and then refused to be interviewed for the article.

Good for her. She was smarter than Simone had been when she was that age. No good would ever come from compromising your privacy.

The doctor, Richard Bryant was his name, had been quoted at length. Ms. Chang was a hero, he said. She'd saved his life. He'd never seen anybody move so fast or incapacitate anybody so quickly and decisively.

Simone touched the face on the photo with her fingertip, gazed up at the sky, and drifted into that place where truth would separate itself from expectation and hope and despair . . . and she felt she was right.

This was her May, and this newspaper photograph was the omen that Simone had been waiting for, fearing and expecting for all these years.

Another wave of dizziness rolled through her brain. She squeezed her eyes shut. She hated the double vision the most, and the awful vertigo that accompanied it, the sensation of falling even when she was secure in her wheelchair.

The dizziness passed a moment later. She blinked her eyes experimentally, then opened them. She realized that she had been crying.

She pressed the buzzer on the lanyard around her neck, and a minute later Jill came out onto the porch.

Jill bent down, pushed Simone's long pigtail to the side, kissed the side of her neck, then knelt in front of her. She peered into Simone's eyes, then reached up and gently touched her cheek. “You've been crying,” she said. “Did you have a spell?”

Simone nodded. “Just a little one.” She smiled. “I am fine.”

“Do you want to try to walk a little bit?”

“Maybe later,” said Simone. She reached for Jill's hand and held it in both of hers. “Bring me my stationery and a pen, would you please? The one with the green ink. And then check the Internet, see if you can find an address for this, um, Carol Ann Chang for me.” She handed her the newspaper.

Jill folded the paper and slid it into the hip pocket of her pants. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she said.

“I am not sure about anything,” Simone said. “But I do feel strongly that she is the one.” She shook her head and smiled. “I
am
quite sure that after I finish writing the note, I will be ready for my massage.”

THOMAS LARRIGAN WAS parked in the far corner of the McDonald's lot, as close to the shadows as he could manage with all the floodlights on the tall poles surrounding the lot. He sipped the coffee he'd bought at the drive-through and fumed. He'd said seven-thirty, and here it was, nearly quarter of eight, and Moran still hadn't showed up. As if his time was more valuable than that of a United States District Court judge, soon to be Supreme Court justice.

He checked his cell phone again. No messages.

Then, without warning, the passenger door opened, the dome light went on, and Moran slid into the front seat.

“Shut the damn door,” said Larrigan.

Moran shut the door, and the dome light went off.

“Do you have to do that?” said Larrigan.

“Do what?”

“Sneak up on people?”

Moran chuckled. “It's what I do. I sneak up on people. It's what I'm good at.”

“You're good at being late, too.”

“Somebody's gotta watch your ass, Judge. Or don't you mind if you're seen in my company?”

“I definitely mind,” said Larrigan.

“So what's up, you gotta meet in a fucking McDonald's parking lot?”

“Bunny Brubaker,” said Larrigan.

“What about her?”

“You should've taken those pictures when you had the chance.”

“I explained it to you,” said Moran. “She probably doesn't even know they're there. That box was way in the back of her closet. But if she ever noticed they were missing, she would've put two and two together. She's no dummy. It would've blown both of us. This way, we know more than she does. That's always how you want it to be.”

“You said she wouldn't be a problem.”

Moran shrugged. “She didn't want to talk about it. It was a long time ago. Another lifetime. She hadn't touched that box of pictures for years. She's into dolphins, for Christ's sake.”

Larrigan reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the lettersized envelope, and held it up for Moran to see in the glow from the parking lot's floodlights. “This came to my office this morning.” The envelope was addressed to Judge Thomas Larrigan, Federal District Court, Boston, MA. It was postmarked Miami, FL.

Moran looked up at him with his eyebrows arched.

Larrigan slid the newspaper clipping out of the envelope and handed it to Moran. “Read this,” he said. Larrigan himself had pretty much memorized it.

It read:

Moran glanced at it, then folded it and handed it back to Larrigan. “So it ain't a secret,” he said. “Congratulations, I guess, huh?”

“Take a look at this.” Larrigan handed Moran a photograph. Actually, it was a photocopy of a photograph. “Look familiar?”

Moran glanced at it and nodded. “It's like those from Bunny's shoebox. There's you and your Vietnamese chick—what was her name? Li An?”

“Yes,” said Larrigan. “Li An.”

“And me and Bunny.” Moran laughed. “We're all looking pretty drunk, wouldn't you say?”

“Yes, we are. We're not looking very dignified.”

Moran frowned. “How'd you get ahold of this?”

Larrigan didn't answer. He took the note out of the envelope and handed it to Moran.

Larrigan had memorized the note, too. It had been eating at him all day.

There was no date or return address on the top.

“Dear Tom,” it read. “Now it all makes sense. Congratulations. And then Eddie Moran just happens to show up after all these years. Nice to see him again. He's still cute. I'm guessing that the
National Enquirer
or
Hard Copy
or
Geraldo
might enjoy our story along with some photographs from those happy days. I bet one of them would give me $50,000 for it. Maybe all four of us could go on TV together. Have a tearful reunion, talk about old times. What do you think?”

She had signed it: “Bunny.”

Larrigan studied Moran as he read the note. His lips actually moved. If you didn't know better, you might think that Eddie Moran wasn't very bright.

Larrigan knew for a fact that Moran was extremely bright. Unprincipled, devious, amoral. Borderline sociopathic. But plenty bright.

Moran folded Bunny's note and handed it to Larrigan.

Larrigan put it back into the envelope. “Well?” he said.

“I probably shoulda taken the damn pictures,” said Moran.

“She expects me to give her fifty grand.”

“Extortion's illegal, Judge.” Moran was grinning.

Larrigan snorted. “Yeah, we'll have her arrested. Good idea. A public trial. Just the ticket.”

“You want to pay her off?”

“You think that'll shut her up?”

“Probably not,” said Moran.

Larrigan gripped the steering wheel with both hands, squeezing as hard as he could, as if he could strangle it. All that was thirty-five years ago. Nobody who hadn't been there could have any idea what it was like. You could watch all the movies, read all the novels and memoirs and history books, and you still wouldn't have a clue.

They were just kids, and they all thought they were going to die. They had all resigned themselves to that. It was the only way they could keep going.