3 Strange Bedfellows (10 page)

I was starved myself, so I filled up a plate with chicken and mashed potatoes while I waited for a chance to catch the widow in private. Since the food was paid for by the Republicans, I considered it my moral duty to consume as much of the stuff as I could.

Meanwhile Susan was constantly surrounded. When she got around to dating again, she'd have no trouble finding prospects. But it wasn't just the men who loved her. I kept hearing women congratulating her for her courage, saying things like "How do you ever find the strength?"

Courage? Strength? Personally, I saw Susan Tamarack as an opportunist trading on her dead husband's name to hustle a $140,000-a-year job she was hopelessly unsuited for.

Finally the woman of the hour broke free of her fans. She headed for a corner door and went through it to a hallway. I grabbed my plateful of grub and followed her.

I reached the hallway at the same moment she turned a corner into another ha
llway. I hurried onward, but before I hit that second hallway she was gone. It was dark here, far from the madding Schuylerville crowd, but after my eyes adjusted I was able to make out a
women
sign above a door. She must be inside there. I settled back against a wall and gnawed on a chicken leg, lying in wait.

I didn't hear anyone coming. I didn't see him, either. But suddenly I felt a cold hand on my shoulder.

I would have screamed, but my mouth was full so I choked instead. Then I dropped my plastic plate, but it didn't go far. The mashed potatoes made it stick to my blue jeans.

Not that I was thinking about the state of my pants
just then. I was staring into the eyes of Hack Sr. They gleamed angrily in the darkness.

"Come here," he hissed, and pulled me out of the hallway. I was so stunned, I let myself be pulled.

He led me into another hallway, in the opposite direction from where I'd come. Then he opened a door into a pitch black stairwell. I stopped dead. "Come here," he hissed again, louder this time now that we were far away from anyone who might hear us.

This was getting way too cloak and dagger for my tastes. Speaking of daggers, did he have any weapons of destruction hidden away in that bulky jacket of his? "What do you want?" I asked tremulously.

He shoved me into the stairwell, showing amazing strength for a sick old man. Thoroughly frightened by now, I was about to shove him back and haul ass out of there as fast as my running shoes could carry me. But then, without warning, he went into one of his patented coughing spasms. I'd have felt ridiculous shoving the guy. I felt ridiculous even being scared of him.

At last the hacking receded to the point where he could talk again, or at least croak out words.

"You're killing me," he gasped.

I didn't know how to respond. Even with the stairwell door open, I couldn't see his face, just a shadow.

After another few coughs, he was able to get out, "Why are you bothering her?"

"Look, how about we go back and get you some water?"

"Why?"
he croaked again.

"Sir, I'm trying to solve a murder here," I said.

His voice was growing stronger. "Susan's got nothing to do with it!"

"I need to find that out for myself."

"The lady has been through hell. Her and the kid are all I got left." He poked my chest with his bony finger. "You fuck with her, you fuck with me."

"I'm not fucking with anybody. I just have a couple of questions."

"Like what?"

Somehow it didn't feel polite to ask the man if his son was a wife beater. I didn't feel like discussing his son's sexual peccadilloes, either. So I said, "I really do need to ask Susan."

He started coughing again. I finally remembered the mashed potato plate sticking to my pants. I reached down to get it off of me, but Hack Sr. suddenly grabbed hold of my arm.

"I'm dying," he rasped.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said.

"I got one month. Maybe two. You think I care about jail?"

He was still gripping my arm as tight as he could, and it started to hurt. But I didn't want to complain about minor arm pain to someone who'd just told me he was dying.

Hack Sr. himself
wasn't burdened by any such concerns about social niceties, as his next words showed. "You bother Susan again," he wheezed, "so help me God, I'll shoot you. I'll blow your fucking brains out with my shotgun."

It seemed to me he was being a tad overprotective, but I didn't argue. Then the old man let go of my arm, coughed some more, and walked away.

After that cozy little
tête-à-tête
with Hack Sr., I somehow didn't feel up to tackling Susan just then. So I went back home to change my potatoed pants.

There was a note f
or me on the kitchen table. "J, We went to Mom's house. Feel safer there. Join us, A." I crumpled up the note and threw it away, feeling guilty—not for the first time—about exposing my family to danger. Did I really have the right to do that?

But no way could I just leave Will swinging in the wind.

A ringing doorbell interrupted my ethical dilemma. Was it an annoying but harmless buzzard, or my favorite blonde bombshell dropping by for another go at seducing me, or a crazed killer? I grabbed one of the kids' baseball bats and went to the door.

It turned out to be the blonde bombshell's husband. He didn't look like a crazed killer. He looked haggard and worn, his shou
lders hunched up against the autumn breezes.

How could I be feeling sorry for the all-powerful State Senate Majority Leader Ducky Medwick? Next to Alfonse D'Amato, Ducky was the New York politician I most loathed. But he
was also a tired, wounded, cuckolded man. I opened the door and let him in.

He gave me a nod and entered wordlessly, sitting down on the same sofa his wife had lounged in yesterday when she put the moves on me. Despite myself, a tingle went through my nether regions at the memory.
Dogs
.

"Can I get you some coffee?" I asked.

"Thanks," Ducky answered.

"Be right back."

When I returned a couple of minutes later with a cup of hot java, he was leaning back in the sofa, eyes closed. He didn't seem to hear me come in. Was he asleep? "Here's your coffee," I said nervously, far too loud.

Without opening his eyes, or moving anything except his lips, Ducky asked, "Do you know how old I am?"

I sat down. "No."

"Sixty." The eyes slowly opened, but they had none of their usual vigor, just dull, aching pain. "I turned sixty last week."

"You don't look it." It's true, he didn't. Right then he looked about ninety.

"I'm dying," he said.

Shit, not another terminally ill old man. But he quickly dispelled that misunderstanding. "Not right away. I'm not sick. But I can't do what I used to, you know what I mean?"

He looked to me with mute appeal. But I didn't know what I was supposed to say, so I just nodded. He picked up his coffee, cradling the warm cup in his hands.

"I never should've married her," he said to his coffee. "She was nineteen. I was forty-five. It was stupid." He put the cup back down and looked me in the eye. "Now we have two kids. I don't want them getting hurt."

Why was everyone hitting me with this "don't hurt the kids" thing? I must look like a softie. "I don't want that, either," I said.

He looked around the room as if noticing it for the first time. "Did someone really shoot at your house last night?"

I froze at the memory. "Yes." I wanted to ask,
Was it you?
but refrained. For the moment.

"And you honestly think they were trying to stop your investigation?"

"I do."

"But you're not stopping." It was a statement, not a question. "Phil Rogers called. The Saratoga chairman. He saw you at Susan Tamarack's rally today."

"News travels fast."

For the first time, a flash of Ducky's old fire leapt into his eyes. "Can't you get it through your thick skull that your friend Shmuckler killed Jack
Tamarack? This shooting last night had nothing to do with Jack!"

"Look
—"

"Because of your insan
e stubbornness, people will suffer.
Innocent
people!" Anger mixed with self-pity in his voice. "All I wanted was a simple divorce. 'Irreconcilable differences. The parties remain amicable.' Instead, the kids will have their mother's infidelities shouted out in every TV newscast! Everyone in the whole state will know about this!
Everyone!"

True enough. And now at last I understood Ducky's deepest fears. They had nothing to do with his kids. Ducky was scared of being publicly branded as a cuckold. He was imagining his colleagues and the media buzzards tittering about him in the cloakroom of the State Senate.

I wasn't the only one who was worried about his shortcomings as a private dick. Power is perception, and if people began perceiving Ducky as half a man, his power was gone.

Now, I'd be the last guy to get upset if Senator Ducky Medwick lost power. But unfortunately, I do have these unpleasant things called scruples. I'm not Larry Flynt, or even worse, Kenneth Starr. "Senator," I said, "I see no
reason to go public with what I know, as long as I can be convinced that you didn't kill the Hack yourself."

"Why in the world would I want to kill him?"

"Well, obviously, because he was sleeping with your wife."

Ducky snorted with disgust at my ignorance. "My wife never slept with Jack Tamarack."

"Sure, she did."

"Nonsense." His shoulders gave a shudder, then he said, "She was sleeping with Pierce."

My own shoulders snapped back in surprise. "Pierce?"

"Yeah, Pierce, the sonufabitch, my goddamn
protégé."
Now his words tumbled out fast and furious, like he'd been damming them in for a long time. "I go to his office last week to take him out for a beer. His secretary sees me coming, says don't go in there, he's busy. I laugh her off. Hey, I'm Ducky Medwick, I don't wait for anybody, I don't even wait for Pataki. So I go in Pierce's office. Linda is fucking him on the desk."

Ducky was so upset, his hands were shaking. Some of his coffee spilled onto the rug, but I didn't say anything. Ducky's story matched Linda's in every respect but one: the name of the guy she was
shtupping
. Kind of a key detail. So who was lying here… and why?

Luckily for my rug, Ducky finally got himself more or less under control. "So that night I packed up and left home," he continued. "What the hell else do you want to know, goddammit?"

"Look, I'm sorry."

"Sure, you are. You'll be telling Ducky Medwick jokes just like all the rest of them."

The expression
"go fuck a duck"
came unbidden into my mind. I shook it off and tried to think of my next move. Should I tell Ducky what his wife had told me? Or should I play that close to the vest?

I decided to throw him a curveball while he was still off balance. "What was the Hack blackmailing you with?"

He looked rattled at my sudden change of topic, then rolled his eyes. "Don't be an idiot. I told you last time—"

"Look, you want me to protect your privacy? Then you better come clean on
everything."

"But there's nothing to come clean on here!"

"If that's how you want to play it, fine. I'll just find out from Zzyp," I blustered.

"Zzyp?" he said, acting puzzled, like he'd never heard the name before.

And maybe he hadn't, I couldn't tell, but I kept hammering away. "You know exactly who I'm talking about. Zzypowski. I'll have to slip him a few grand for the info, which may kind of piss me off. I may get so pissed off, I'll decide to expose
all
your little scandals."

Ducky threw up his hands. "If I knew what you were talking about, I'd tell you, I swear."

"Cut the crap. Pierce was your protégé, you said so yourself. So why didn't you endorse him for Congress?"

"Because
—"

"Because the Hack blackmailed you into endorsing
him
instead.”

"You've got it all wrong
—"

"Don't give me this baloney
—"

"Will you just shut up and
listen?
Pierce refused to run!"

I stared at Ducky. "But I thought
—"

"Yeah, everybody thought. See, at first he was running. But then when the Rep
ublican Committee met at the beginning of June, he told us behind closed doors at the last minute he was backing out. Asked us not to tell the media or anyone else. We tried to get him to run, or at least explain why he wasn't, but he said he had personal reasons."

Personal reasons.
Yeah, they were personal, all right. Finally everything was coming together.