Saving Grace (14 page)

The phone rang. Paul put down the carton and answered it. “He’s not home,” he said.

“No comment,” he said.

As soon as he hung up, the phone rang again: same questions, same response. The third time, Paul grabbed the receiver and yelled, “No comment, goddammit!” Then he gasped. “Oh, God. I’m sorry, Jessica. We’ve been getting these crank calls. I was just leaving....I see.... I understand.... Yeah, another time. ‘Bye.”

He smashed his racket to the ground. His handsome face was bright red. “Goddammit! Do you know who that was? Jessica Dumont, daughter of
the
Jason Dumont. I’ve only been trying for a whole year, finally I’m asked to the estate for tennis, and now this fucker Barnaby...
 
What the hell has Dad done?”

Lily slapped him. Her diamond ring scratched his cheek and a few drops of blood surfaced. Paul touched his face, then looked at his fingers. Lily turned and walked through the French doors into the garden. He ran down the hall to Gracie’s room and threw open the door.

She lay on her mattress, fully dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, but sound asleep. “God damn you, Gracie!”
 

She woke with a start. Her eyes went from her brother’s face to the newspaper in his hand. Then they closed.

“I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” he cried. “I hope you’re fucking proud of what you’ve done to me and everyone else in this family.” He threw the
Probe
at her and slammed the door. Gracie batted the paper away in disgust, as if it were a roach. Moments later came the roar of Paul’s Camaro.

She went to the window and peeked out. Lily was kneeling in the dirt with her back to the house, furiously yanking weeds. As if she felt her daughter’s eyes, she turned and looked up. Their gazes locked. Lily’s reproach passed through glass as through water. Gracie covered her face and turned away.

* * *

Barnaby woke from the sleep of the just to the sound of a phone that had been ringing for a while. He grabbed it. “Yeah?”

“I’ll get you for this.”

He sat up. “Gracie?”

“When you didn’t call, I knew something was up. I hoped it wasn’t this. But I knew it was.”

“Hey, listen, I’m sorry you had to—”

“Fuck you.”

“Baby, I understand you’re hurt. If it’s any consolation, I’m hurting, too. But someday when you’ve got a little distance on this thing, you’ll understand that I just did what I had to do.”

“And now I’m going to do what I have to do.” Gracie hung up.

9

THE FIRST PART WAS BAD ENOUGH. Jonathan read it again, sitting in a parked car on a small lane near his house in Highview. He couldn’t go home; the house was surrounded by reporters. His office was under siege too. What he longed to do was to drive out to East Hampton and lay his head in Lily’s lap, but his daughter would also be there, and he wasn’t ready to deal with her. Thus was Jonathan Fleishman, a self-made man of substance, reduced by the stroke of a charlatan’s pen to sheltering in a car like a poor homeless person.

In the first half of the article, Barnaby accused him of conspiracy, extortion, racketeering, and influence peddling. He named six minority-owned companies that did business with the city and also employed Jonathan as a consultant or legal adviser. Barnaby harped particularly on Rencorp, calling Jonathan the company’s “corporate fairy godmother” and implying that he profited from their good fortune.

Barnaby’s witches’ brew of innuendos lacked the essential ingredient of proof. There was no law against Jonathan’s being retained by companies that did business with the city, and no evidence that he had perverted the political process to help them. But Jonathan didn’t delude himself. Proof sometimes matters in a court of law, never in the court of public opinion. No one reads that carefully. Impressions, not facts, count; implications alone can kill.

A smear job in the
Probe
didn’t carry the weight of one in the
Times.
People were onto the
Probe’s
tactics of insinuation and damning by association. Nevertheless, the piece was strong enough and contained enough grains of truth to force Lucas Rayburn to react. Which way would he jump? If their longtime friendship came into play, it would probably be as a negative factor, compelling Lucas to bend over backward to deny him the benefit of the doubt. If indictment was hanging in the balance, Barnaby’s piece could tip the scale.

In his heart, though, Jonathan could not believe it. After all, he was innocent. He had always played hard, but he played by the rules. They couldn’t change the rules on him in the middle of the game.

Lucas was a reasonable man. If he were here now, if they could talk freely, Jonathan could explain this to him. “Lucas,” he would say, “I did what everybody does. We all have the same problem. How do you live on a politician’s pay when you’ve got to deal with people whose income makes your salary look like milk money? You don’t take Donald Trump to lunch at McDonald’s, not if you want to score points for your constituency. Everyone has to have something on the side; you know that, Lucas.”

A face Jonathan knew as well as his own materialized in the passenger’s seat. Lucas said, “There are limits, my friend. There’s a code.”

Jonathan pounded the steering wheel. “Precisely! And I have adhered strictly to that code, the real one, not the written one, the one that tells you what’s okay and what’s beyond the pale. The same code you follow, and every other honest politician.”

Lucas leaned back in his seat, his head just grazing the roof of the car, and laughed that deep, slow, mellifluous laugh that Jonathan had always loved. “Oh, man,” he said, wiping his eyes, “you always had a mouth on you. Only, since when did you start buying your own crap?”

Then, before Jonathan could reply, he vanished, and Jonathan was alone.

He turned back to the paper. The first part of the article was politically devastating. The second aimed straight at his heart. It was a paradigm of hypocrisy: the story of the sale of the Martindale house, attributed to an anonymous source, but told as only Gracie would tell it.

Jonathan read it and wept.

It was as if his own hand had risen up against him, his own mouth defiled him.
 

If it were in his power, he would have cast her from his heart and home; he would have paid her back as she deserved. But hard as he tried, Jonathan could not imagine doing that. Gracie was a part of him. Not even her treachery could sever the bond. Against his will, he suffered her pain as well as his own, for he was certain that Gracie, too, had been betrayed.

* * *

“Great story, man.” Lou Bone, the
Probe’s
custodian, lifted his hand for a high five. Barnaby slapped it.

All through the newsroom he heard, “Nice work, Barnaby,” “Good going, man.” Roger came out of his office with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip, pumped Barnaby’s hand, and pulled him inside.

“The
Time’s
metro editor called,” Roger said, shutting the door.

“Yeah? Does he want to offer me a job?”

Roger glowered. “They want to interview you for their story on Fleishman.”

“What the hell for?”

“You’re part of it. It’s like I told you: Fleishman’s staunchest supporters blows the whistle on him, that’s news.”

Barnaby threw his head back and boomed a laugh. He was in an excellent mood. “This is nothing. Wait till Kavin rats him out.”

“You think he will?”

“Do bears shit in the woods? I’ve already got the headline: ‘Kavin Caves In.’ What do you think—too hokey?”

There was a disturbance in the newsroom, shouts, sounds of a struggle. Roger cracked the office door and peeked out. Three men, including the burly custodian, were hanging on to the arms of a furious intruder.
 

“Let him go!” Roger said. “Come in, Jonathan.”

Jonathan Fleishman strode toward them, eyes fixed on Barnaby, with a look that sent the reporter scuttling backward. Roger stood in the doorway, barring the way. “We’re not going to do anything foolish, are we?”

“You’re scum, Barnaby,” Jonathan said. “You’re a sleazy, no-good, schoolgirl-seducing bastard.”
 

Roger slammed the door so hard that dust flew from the lintel. “What are you talking about, Fleishman? Nobody here seduced any schoolgirls.”

“You hear him denying it? Ask
him
what he did to my daughter.”

“Nothing,” Barnaby said. “I never touched her.”

“That’s not what Gracie says.”

Barnaby hesitated. “Bullshit,” he said, a moment too late.

Roger gave him a hard look, and Jonathan’s face darkened. “You screwed my little girl. You used her – you led her into a betrayal that will hurt her for the rest of her life.”

Barnaby came around the desk and sat on the edge, crossing his arms. “You’re avoiding the real issues. We’ve got serious stuff on the table; why don’t you answer the charges?”

“Why don’t you?” Jonathan turned to Roger. “Do you condone his seducing a teenager to get at her father?”

The editor, still staring at Barnaby, lit a cigarette. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“Fire his ass,” Jonathan said. “You want to protect your paper, fire the bastard
.”

“Your concern for the
Probe
is touching.”

“This is bullshit,” Barnaby said. “I’ve got a story to write.” He stood and came around the desk. Jonathan stepped back as if to let him pass—and then he swung. There was a distinct crack as his fist connected solidly with Barnaby’s nose. The reporter flew backward into a stack of old newspapers. Blood streamed from his nose into his beard.
 

Jonathan turned and walked out, pushing through the crowd outside Hasselforth’s office. No one tried to stop him.

* * *

After they stanched the flow of blood from Barnaby’s nose, Roger picked up the phone.

“Who are you calling?” said Barnaby.

“The cops.”

“Hang up.”

“The man assaulted you. I’m a witness.”

“So what? I just trashed his life.”

“He
fucking broke your nose! That’s a crime. Not to mention you can sue his ass.”

Barnaby shrugged, pressing a wad of paper towels to his nose. “I’m not making a federal case over a pop to the nose. We’ve got him on bigger stuff.”

Roger hung up the phone. “So you did fuck her.”

“I didn’t seduce her, okay? If anything, she seduced me. And forget that schoolgirl shit. She’s of age.”

“Barely. What is she, seventeen?”

“Eighteen.”

“Fleishman’s right: you
are
a prick.”

Barnaby scowled. “You got the story, didn’t you?”

“How much of it came from her?”

“Only the bit about the house in Martindale. It checked out.”

“Did she know what you were working on?”

“Give me a break.”

“You fucking lied to me, Barnaby, and you’ve put me in a hell of a position.”

“So what? Am I fired? Let me know, Roger, because if you don’t want me, there’s a lot of papers that do.” He stormed out.
 

Ronnie Neidelman was waiting just outside. “Oh, poor baby, did the big bad man hurt you?” He tried to pass her. She blocked the passage. “So unfair. Just because you screwed his precious
teenaged
daughter.”

“Move!”
 

“Did you really think you could have your cake and fuck it, too?”

“What if I did?” he shot back, provoked beyond endurance. “It beat fucking your bony ass.”

She slapped him hard.

“Not again,” he wailed, as blood spurted from his nose. Laughter rolled through the newsroom. Barnaby scanned the room, but the sound seemed to come from whichever way he wasn’t looking.

10

AT LAST LILY HAD SOME SOLID WORRIES to anchor her anxiety. Things that yesterday were as clear as glass had abruptly turned opaque; she could not foresee where they would be a year from now, or what would become of her family. And yet the matter that most occupied her mind was the shocking state of her garden.

As if a veil had been lifted from her eyes, she saw that her beds were sadly overgrown, her valiant rosebushes choked by weeds. It was a great mystery. Her life (which she now saw in retrospective, as if it were over) had been so leisurely, so free of constraint; why, then, was her garden in such disarray?

“Off with your head,” Lily said, kneeling in the dirt, bareheaded. “Take that, weed. Who asked you here? Who planted you? You don’t belong—out, weed!” Each intruder uprooted gave her a pinprick of satisfaction.

Beside her on the grass, the cordless phone shrilled. She answered cautiously, but it was only Jonathan’s secretary again.

“I just spoke to him,” Maggie O’Rourke said in the brogue forty years of exile had not eradicated. “I don’t know where he is, he wouldn’t tell me. All I know is he’s on his way to you. And he told me to have the service pick up calls to the house. You can ring them anytime for messages. Have you been getting calls?”