Immaculate Deception (11 page)

That again. She couldn't resist.

"Some love," she said, then retreated, waiting
for more. He took another deep sip on his mug.

"Needs nourishment. Like anything," he sighed.

Goes for girls, too, she told herself, keeping her silence.

"He told me he hadn't touched her in six and a half
years. Didn't tell me whose choice it was, but then that was none of my
business, was it? One thing he did say was that he was committed to his wop
lady." He laughed. "He didn't say it that way. His beautiful Beatrice
he called her. Said Frankie was ruining his life. I hated to hear it. I tell
you the Lord is unfair, FitzGerald. Me, I would have been loyal and true to
Frankie till the bitter end. To the bitter end."

"When did he tell you that? The part about not
touching her for six and a half years."

"What did I say? Two, three weeks ago." He closed
his eyes calculating. "Day after St. Paddy's day, actually. Four weeks. He
called me to apologize for not showing up at the party. We have this party
every St. Paddy's day at the house. Wife goes all out. Big bash. Can't remember
when Jack McGuire didn't show. He had just come back from a month in the Islands."

"With Beatrice?" Fiona asked.

"Who else? Said he and Beatrice had a bad flight. Too
pooped out to come."

He continued, but she listened with half an ear. She was
doing her own calculations. Dr. Benton had estimated the fetus as about six
weeks old. If Grady was right, that would eliminate Jack McGuire as a fathering
possibility.

"When did you see Frankie last?"

"Me?"

He shrugged and raised his eyes to the ceiling.

"Coupla months. We were always on the dais together or
some such. Royal Order of Hibernians. That's what it was. We both spoke. Patsy
and I drove her back to the house. She still kept the old house where she grew
up. She's got these two maiden aunts that keep up the place. We spoke two,
three times a month. Politics. You know, she needed something from the State
House or I needed something from the feds. One hand washes the other. You know
the drill."

Be delicate, she cautioned herself.

"You two were, as you said, platonic buddies."

She watched his reaction, which was not to react at all.
Possible, she thought. He was a charmer. Probably had scores of ladies dancing
around him. And a couple of favorites that serviced whatever needs the booze
had spared. After a long silence, he raised his eyes and looked at her.

"You're flattering me, FitzGerald. It was her choice.
Not mine. I told you. I loved the woman."

He grew deeply contemplative. He was clever. Candor was
always a good defense. He could be blowing smoke, but she could not rule him
out as Frankie's lover. At the very least, she could imagine them together in
that way. Not like with Foy.

"Any others putting in for Frankie's seat?"

"Not yet. But anything is possible in politics. Always
is. Even Frankie had opponents, but nothing serious."

"Where does May Carter stand in all this?"

The question confused him. She could see his guard go up.

"How do you know May?"

"Hell, I'm investigating a death. They were very
close, I'm told.

"Old one-note May. Never could do enough to satisfy
her. Not even Frankie. She's a powerhouse. No question about it." She
could see him growing progressively cautious.

"Think she might decide to run?" She felt
snakelike, slithering silently toward her prey, struggling to quiet the rattle.

"May doesn't run. May endorses."

"Will she endorse you?"

"Always has."

"And if she doesn't?"

"Then it's uphill all the way," he said with some
reluctance. "I mean we're all committed to the cause, but May packs a
wallop nationally as well."

"And she always supported Frankie?"

"Always."

"Would it hurt if she stopped supporting
Frankie?"

His cup was still half-full, the coffee cooling, which she
took as another clue to his caution. He wanted to keep his wits about him.
Harlan Foy had hinted that May always kept them anxious about her endorsement
and was not very happy about Frankie's willingness to consort with the enemy,
like Charles Rome.

"Depends," Grady said.

"On what?"

"On how actively she campaigned against her. The thing
about May is that she commands an army of loyal troops. This business of
abortion is powerful stuff. Powerful. If she thought that Frankie was losing
her effectiveness, then she wouldn't hesitate to fight her. I mean really fight
her."

"The question then is, Did she?"

"Did she what?"

"Plan to dump Frankie. Put her support and her troops
at the service of someone else, someone more malleable. Someone who she could
control more effectively."

"I get the message," Grady said and Fiona remembered
that it was an attentive Grady who had sat next to May Carter at the Capitol
service.

"Way out of your depth, FitzGerald. You're a cop, not
a politician, and I can see the gears grinding."

She tried to second-guess him. Was he thinking that she was
concocting a scenario in which Frankie takes poison because May Carter has
decided to dump her and she sees her life going up in smoke? Her husband gone.
Her kids blaming her. The potential loss of her place in Congress. Could have
lighted a fuse inside of her. Set off a massive suicidal depression.

Seeing those gears grinding was nothing compared to still
another scenario. In this one, Frankie discovers she is pregnant by a lover,
whoever he may be. May knows her husband is no longer sleeping with her. No
secret that, not in South Boston. Can't admit that she's pregnant by a lover.
Can't have an abortion. Too tough a moral burden to carry. Hard to keep secret
in any event. Can't hide her pregnancy. May pulls her endorsement. Her
constituents abandon her. A triple bind. Juicy grist for the media mill. Her
career, her life, going downhill in a handbasket. Only one way out for Frankie.

She could almost buy that, she decided. But would the
Eggplant?

She looked at Jack Grady, the Jack of Clubs, and
contemplated the swirling mass of hidden agendas, secret ambitions and
invisible motives that moved people to desperate acts. The human mind could
justify almost anything. For the greater good, could May Clark commit murder?
Weren't wars fought for the greater good? Would Jack McGuire kill for the love
of another woman? A story as old as time itself. Remember Helen of Troy, who
triggered a devastating war. Could festering ambition drive Jack Grady to
murder, despite his protestations of love? And Harlan Foy? What turmoil and
agitation lies in the eye of repression?

Call it suicide and be done with it. She urged the logic on
herself. There was still no physical evidence or anything to suggest foul play.
Yet the Eggplant had persisted.

"You can read anything into anything," Grady
said, with remarkable insight into her thoughts. "The woman is dead by her
own hand for chrissakes. If you weren't a woman, I'd tell you what you remind
me of."

"I'm a cop. Not a woman." Fiona snapped. She no
longer felt like ingratiating herself. She had gotten from him all she was able
to absorb and it irritated her to know she wasn't any closer to an airtight
conclusion, at least one that would satisfy the Eggplant, than when she had
left Washington.

"Alright then," Grady said. "The African
weejee bird." His lips formed a smug grin.

"The what?"

"It's like you were the African weejee bird," he
repeated, his smile broadening. His speech had thickened. With his middle
finger he drew circles in the air. "The African weejee bird flies in ever
decreasing concentric circles until it loses itself up its own asshole."

He studied her face for a reaction.

"Then what happens?" Fiona asked.

He shrugged and emptied his mug.

The room was filled with flowers and her first kneejerk
thought was that somebody had died. There were three kinds of roses, white, red
and pink placed on surfaces all around the room. A silver bucket in a fresh
load of ice was on a stand near the couch. There was a card propped against a
rose-filled vase.

"To the girl of my dreams," it read.

"I don't believe this," she said aloud. Then she
heard his voice responding. He had sneaked up on her.

"Believe it," Greg said, encircling her from
behind, kissing her neck. She was glad that he could not see her misty eyes.
His sudden attack of romanticism had stunned her. Athletically sexual,
passionate, physically affectionate. He had been all of that. But a roomful of
roses, a cute card and a surprise hello, this was a side of him that he had
kept hidden.

Then it occurred to her.

He knows. The idea frightened her.

"I missed you," he whispered in her ear.

Her eyes had dried and she dissolved in his arms.

"Thought you had enough of me last night," she
said.

"Never enough."

"I catch your drift."

"Champagne now or after?" he whispered.

"I'd prefer a clear head," she sighed, letting
him undress her as she embraced him.

It was late afternoon before they got to the Champagne. After the first sip, she realized that they had forgotten to eat lunch and said
so.

"Man does not live by bread alone," Greg said.
They wore matching terry cloth robes provided by the hotel. She rested her head
against his shoulder and sipped her Champagne. It was perfect, she thought,
absolutely perfect. She lifted an arm and caressed his face in gratitude. He
took her hand and kissed her fingers.

"It's true you know," he said.

"What's true?"

"You are the girl of my dreams," he said.

"This is getting out of hand," she said, putting
a spin of humor on the remark, mostly to hide a nagging emotional discomfort.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.

"I know," he said, kissing her hair.

"Snap out of it," she joked.

There was a long silence as they sipped their Champagne. She watched the reddish tint of the setting sun against the windowpanes.

"Getting any closer?" he asked. She had discussed
the case with him perfunctorily, satisfying his curiosity within strict bounds
of ethics and professionalism.

"Can of worms," she said.

As a lawyer, he knew the constrictions, but he was also a
clever manipulator, shifty, with hair-trigger insight and the ability, as they
say, to put two and two together. Also, he probably thought he had a vested
interest in the case on two counts, his experience with his ex-wife and his
intimacy with Fiona.

Giving him any information was a bit of a tease on her
part. She could not truly trust him to keep his mouth sealed and it was quite
possible he might find use for the information, especially if he needed to
dazzle a potential client with his insider clout.

"Well, was it suicide or political
assassination?" he asked.

"Political assassination? Now there's a heavy
hypothesis."

He simulated a gun with his fingers.

"Bang. Bang. I could have done it without a pang of
conscience."

The Bernard Goetz syndrome. He shoots three black toughs
who hassled him in a New York subway and many of us secretly applaud. He is our
surrogate."

Many murders, she knew, were surrogate murders, prompted by
deep psychological hatreds of mothers, fathers, siblings, wives, husbands,
whatever.

"Apt comparison, sarge. Goetz had no cause, no
ideology. His victims were also surrogates. For all those black toughs whom he
perceived as hassling his life."

She detected a persuasive passion in his tone, a growing
vehemence. It seemed odd for postcoital conversation which should have been low
key, lazy, laid back.

"And poor Frankie?" she asked, her question still
easy, off hand, although she found herself growing edgy. "Would she have
been a surrogate?"

"For me she would," he snapped. She could sense
his rising anger, which surprised her.

"Why?"

"Religious fanaticism. As if our bodies didn't belong
to us. Hell, that fetus doesn't get there by accident. Hiding behind the idea
of God to mortgage us body and soul to the State. I hate them all."

"Can't say you haven't got a position on the
issue," she said, searching for a way to lighten his mood.

"Controlling your own destiny," he said, the
anger still boiling. "That's the name of the game." The idea hit a
deep chord in her. She was trying to control her own destiny, at the expense of
his. "All they want to do is control us. Always control. That's their
game."

There was only one logical explanation for his vehemence.
It was, she remembered, his wife's cause and he hated his wife. Therefore, he
hated her cause.

That she could understand. Also his reaction. But he had
also touched on something that had relevance to her investigation. She
deliberately tried to recalibrate the conversation, take it from the specific
to the general an out of the personal arena.

She turned her head to look at him. "It's America. A cause is a cause. Is ideological passion enough motive to kill?" It was a
lawyerly question and she hoped it would trigger a lawyerly response.

He stroked her cheek, but she could tell that he was having
a hard time repressing the emotional baggage he was carrying.

"Done all the time. It's a worldwide epidemic."
He patted her shoulder. "Believe me I have observed it firsthand, It's a
thin line between the political and the personal, I can tell you."

He grew silent for a long moment. His thoughts seemed to
drift and she could tell he was still under the spell of painful old psychic
injuries. "It requires strong measures to combat it, to stand up to it and
protect yourself against its onslaught. People with causes never admit to the
possibility that they are wrong, you see. Beware especially of people who
believe that they have enlisted in God's' army. Their minds are closed. History
has shown they are willing to kill for their ideology."

He reached out and refilled their glasses with Champagne, sipping some and replacing the glass on the end table. She could tell he wasn't
finished with his argument.

"There's a complete lack of doubt, absolute surety.
Under that mantle you stop at nothing. The cause takes over. You're no longer
an individual. Nothing matters but the cause. No matter what it does to the
people around you. Soon all those who are against the cause are mortal enemies.
Then hate takes over. Give it a mandate from the deity, any deity, and you've
got unshakable fanaticism. I abhor all ideology."

"Which explains why you can represent such shitheels
as the tobacco industry, Libya and the Moonies."

"You got it."

Suddenly he shrugged and shook himself like an awakening
dog. Fiona detected a twinge of embarrassment. Obviously, he had taken the
subject farther than he had intended. Certainly, it was farther than she had
intended. But he had been a sounding board and she forced herself to come full
circle, back to the case at issue.

"So you think it could be a political
assassination?"

"I told you. If I had the guts I might have done it
myself."

"I'm serious."

"If I were on the other side, I wouldn't have voted
for it," he said. "What you don't want to do in this business is
create a martyr. Frankie murdered would be an opening for canonization."
He paused. "On the other hand, he could have been a lone killer, a
fire-in-the-belly killer with the political all mixed up with the personal. Lee
Harvey Oswald, for openers."

"You're getting closer to May Carter's thesis. She
thinks a hit man did it."

"She may have a point," Greg said.

She had her rebuttal ready before he finished the sentence.

"No way. A hit man doesn't do poison."

"A fanatic then, a crazy."

"Too well planned for the work of a crazy. A crazy
pushes, chokes, shoots, cuts, bombs. Not this cat. This killer, if there was one,
calculates."

"You're murdering our theories, Madame
Detective."

"Maybe," she said, mulling the distinction
between politics and ideology. Grady was politics. May Carter was ideology. Her
thoughts were spinning now.

"Which brings us back to suicide," Greg said.

"I'm not ready to vote. But if it was suicide then the
lady deliberately created the puzzle. No note. No clues." She paused. A
yellow caution light flashed in her mind. There was a clue, of course. A live
fetus growing inside of her. The irony was disturbing. She shook her head.
Maybe this was her message. Death before abortion. The ultimate political
statement. An outrageous act to illustrate a point. She shivered suddenly and
stood up.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"She could be laughing at us. All this effort and
angst. If she wasn't who she was, it would be over. File closed. And yet ...
when you ask yourself the eternal question. Who benefits? You do get
answers."

She could sense him waiting for more. Ethics and propriety
intruded, repressing her. The fact was she was not yet ready to truly trust
him, which was ironic since she had proven that she herself could not be
trusted and had plotted to steal his genetic legacy without his permission.
Guilt again. It came at her in waves. Once again, she faced them, braced, and
let them crash over her and eddy back on the tide. She clutched her midsection
and paced the room.

"And suspects," Greg volunteered, recalling the
question, bringing her back to Frankie's death. Suspects, yes, she thought, but
no real evidence, no nagging hunches. Only the Eggplant's good batting average
on instinct. An errant thought suddenly floated into her consciousness. No, it
wasn't the Eggplant's instinct pushing her now. At the beginning maybe, but not
now. Or any burning desire beyond professionalism to discover the truth about
Frankie's death. Nor the desire to see justice done on principle. None of the
above.

It was the dead baby.

A chill swept through her. It was an issue she had avoided,
never daring to come down on either side. She believed intensely in her power
to control her destiny, to make responsible decisions concerning her life,
which included her body and her mind. The church held her as a sentimental
childhood concept, although when she did go to church on rare occasions, she
was moved by the soothing sense of spirituality, of being a tiny particle of a
great grand design, a rudderless figure in a stormy sea with no power
whatsoever against the wind and tides. Yes, it moved her, but it also repelled
her.

No, she had not allowed herself to fantasize a predicament
where she would ever have to make a choice. She had been impeccable in
protecting herself against pregnancy. A passionate woman, she had always kept
her wits about her. Even in the most intense sexual situations she had never
gambled on fate. Never.

Until now.

She let the sudden chill subside, then drove the idea from
her mind. Only then did she cease her pacing and plunk herself down beside him
on the couch.

"The thing about this business..." she said, forcing
her thoughts back to the case, soaking in the comfort of his proximity. She
lifted her arm and put it on his bare chest. "...in the absence of a
confession or even hard proof, you can't make a good case out of mere
suspicion. In any homicide there are always beneficiaries. They cover the
spectrum."

Grady gets to run. McGuire gets his other lady. Carter gets
a controllable congressman. The Eggplant gets to be show bizzy. She gets to go
to Boston and make a baby. A giggle bubbled out of her.

"That's funny?"

She shrugged and with her free hand reached for the Champagne glass and emptied it. He drank his and filled them both again.

"Now, down to the business at hand," she
whispered caressing him. He lifted her face and kissed her deeply. She felt it
beginning again, the tide of pleasure stirring. He had slipped his hand into
her robe and began to knead her breasts.

The sound at the door startled them both. It was a loud
hammering noise, hardly the discreet knock of the hotel help.

Greg ran to the door and called out, but he did not open
it.

"What the hell is going on?"

The hammering continued unabated.

"I'm calling the manager," Greg threatened. It
did not intimidate whoever was doing the hammering, although the intervals
seemed to be getting longer. Greg looked toward Fiona who shrugged.

"I want that bitch," a gravelly voice shouted in
the lengthening intervals between the pounding. The voice had a familiar ring.
Fiona came toward the door.

"What bitch?" Fiona called out, recognizing the
voice.

"You. The cop bitch," the gravelly voice said.
Fiona opened the door. Jack McGuire, red-faced and fuming stood in the doorway.
His blue eyes peering from underneath shaggy white eyebrows glared hatred.

"You calm down, pal," Greg said menacingly.

"Out of my way, asshole," McGuire said heading
toward Fiona who stood her ground.

"It's okay, Greg," she said calmly shifting
herself into a Karate stance in case the man got physical. She found his eyes
and stared him down. He got just close enough to wave a finger in front of her
nose.

"You come around here trying to make a mockery of my
wife's name. I tell you this, lady. You go back to that..." Spittle
settled at the ends of his mouth and when he spoke sticky strands clung to the
corners. "...that sewer you call the capital. Your kind is not welcome
here." He paused, the flow of his words constipated by rage.

"Make some sense, McGuire," Fiona said calmly.

"You don't have to take this, Fi," Greg said.

In the pause, Jack McGuire seemed to find his tongue again.