Stranglehold (6 page)

If this had been a puzzle you'd have realized that she'd just contributed at least two major pieces. And a picture was beginning to emerge. Bobby was a musician and she'd hinted that while there'd been trouble they hadn't had anything to do with it. Giving a picture of the kind of people they knew. The kind whose visits left blood behind.

“Was he hurt today?”

She pulled her head back so she could see me. “Hurt?”

“The blood. Was that your husband's?”

She shook her head. “No, no. Bobby can take care of himself. It was—” A deep sigh. She smelled of tears and shampoo. “I really can't say anymore.”

He was there then. He managed to slam the door back against the wall in what seemed a second. And then he was charging me with a fist ready to smash me in the face.

I got my elbow in front of my face to block his punch, rising to my feet as he attacked. He was a few inches shorter than my six-two and on the slim side. But the arms at the end of his T-shirt sleeves were muscular and he knew how to fight. He stepped to the side of me, forcing me to turn and throw myself off balance in the process. He managed to hit me hard just below my cheekbone. But he made the mistake of hurrying in to follow up, and I was able to smack him with a blunt right hand to stun him. I cut his lip. He fell back against the desk.

“Stop it, Bobby!” she shrieked. “Do you know that our baby can hear everything that's going on? Do you want to lose this one, too?”

Her words had a powerful and immediate effect on him. “Oh, shit, I'm sorry, Gwen. I'm sorry.” His words were troubled by what I'd done
to his lip. His arms dropped to his sides. Then he ran a hand through his dark curly hair.

I walked to the door and closed it from inside. My head hurt from where he'd hit me. I was glad we weren't throwing punches any longer.

I came back and said, “We need to talk.”

He wiped the blood from his lower lip with the back of his hand. “Who is this jerk, Gwen?”

“I'm not sure, Bobby. But he didn't hurt me. He was nice.”

“Nice. Right.” To me: “You know, I could call the cops and get you in a lot of trouble.” He had a spiky beard that gave his handsome features a diabolical look. That was the whole idea. He was a standard-issue rock star type. The losers looked about the same as the winners. But the winners wouldn't have to stay in motels like this one.

“Go ahead and call them. You want to use my cell phone?”

“You trying to be funny?”

“Bobby, calm down. This isn't good for me. Or the baby.”

He made dramatic futile gestures with his hands and turned to face the wall. He pressed his forehead against it and stayed that way for a full minute. I glanced at Gwen. She just shook her head.

“Something happened here this morning, Bobby,” I said. “I'm trying to find out what.”

He came off the wall and said, “Nothing happened here.”

“There was a lot of blood on the desk. Somebody got hurt.”

“How the hell did you know that?”

“I came in here and saw it.”

“Yeah? How'd you get in?”

“The door was ajar. I walked in.”

He shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and then closed his eyes and lifted his head to the ceiling. I recognized the move. James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause.
Nice to know that Bobby's generation was still honoring him. “This is really bullshit.”

“Maybe we should tell him, Bobby—”

“No!” He dropped the pose and crossed to Gwen. “Honey, we don't know who this jerk is. Or why he's so interested in everything. You want to see me go to prison?”

“Oh, God, Bobby, don't even say that.”

“Then don't say we should tell him anything.”

Right now I was invisible to them.

Bobby got down on his haunches and put his head on her lap. She stroked it the way she would a child's. Her eyes glistened with tears. Bobby spoke, the words muffled: “You have to stay with me on this, Gwennie. Otherwise I'm going to be in real trouble.”

It might have been an act. Hard to say. Maybe he wasn't as tough as he thought and was using his wife as his mommy. Or maybe he had to keep her on his side and this moment of fear and sadness was his way of ensuring her loyalty.

He stood up and pulled down his T-shirt and hitched up his jeans. “Pack everything, honey. I've already checked us out.”

“Checked us out? Where are we going? I don't want to leave, Bobby.” Obviously this grim room had become a kind of home to her. The prospect of leaving it scared her.

“A nicer place, honey. Much nicer.”

“But we don't have the money.”

“What did I say about not talking in front of him? I'll explain all this later. My suitcase is ready to go. You just get your stuff ready.”

He turned to me. “So that's it, man. We're leaving and I don't want to see you following us.”

“How're you going to stop me?”

“I could always shoot out your tires.”

“God, Bobby, stop talking like that. And you'd better not have a gun. You promised you wouldn't get one, remember?”

To me he said, “Get out of here. Now.”

Gwen sat with her hands on the swell of her belly. She was crying again, silently.

I took out one of my cards and wrote my cell phone number on the back. I walked over to her and dropped it in her lap.

“What the hell you think you're doing?”

“I'm letting her know how to get in touch with me.”

“Let me see that.” He reached down to grab it, but I got his wrist before he could pick it up.

“This is between your wife and me. She needs a friend.” To Gwen I said: “If he tears the card up, just remember the name of my business. They'll put you in touch with me. That number is answered twenty-four hours a day. Same with my cell phone.”

I let go of him. He didn't face me for a while. I think he was more embarrassed than hurt. I had made him look weak in front of his wife. I wouldn't have appreciated that, either.

“Oh, God, Bobby, this is not going the way you said it would.”

“Just shut up. And I mean right now.” Then he walked to her and kissed her on top of the head. “It'll be all right, Gwen. We just have to stay cool is all.”

“Remember, Gwen. Night or day, I'm ready to help you.”

“You always sniff around other men's wives?” Bobby said.

“Just when they have husbands like you.”

When I reached the door I looked back at them. She was weeping again. He sat down next to her and took her to him. They'd changed roles. Now he was the adult and she was the child. He kept stroking her head and kissing her on the side of her face. He was like most of us, a person of parts, in his case a violent punk capable of great tenderness.

This was probably as close to the Hollywood style of red carpet as a small Midwestern city was going to get. The guests at the fund-raiser were dressed in evening clothes, and as they trekked across the lobby to the ballroom door a variety of digital cameras and video cams noted their appearance. They carried themselves with an air of prosperity and importance. The men favored dinner jackets, and the women cocktail dresses. There were gorgeous women of several ages, from the young to the elderly. This wasn't the faction of our party where you would find schoolteachers and union members. These were the people with money and they were vital to Susan Cooper's campaign.

The ballroom had been decorated with a diamond-flashing disco ball in the ceiling like God's eye overseeing the foolishness of the mortals beneath. The tables with their brilliant white tablecloths looked like large lilies. On stage was a local band called Black Velvet Elvis. Right now they were doing some very fine Chuck Berry. The singer was tall, lean, rock-star handsome, and his bass guitarist was a very young,
pretty girl who even from here resembled him. Later I got a glimpse of the drummer. Very young but the same resemblance to singer and guitarist. A family affair? Even though few people had been seated, four or five couples were already on the dance floor going at it.

On the right corner of the stage was a rostrum. Susan would be introduced from here and would give a brief speech. An enormous black-and-white photograph of her formed the backdrop.

The only person I recognized was Peter Cooper. He was obviously still pissed because I didn't use his speeches. He gave me one of those reluctant little waves you give the man who's about to dump offal on your lawn and then scooted in the direction of the bar.

I didn't see any of my people. I wondered why they were late. I was just about ready to call them when I saw Ben hurry into the lobby. He washed a hand across his face. He was sweating. He looked around anxiously. When he saw me he took a deep breath and hurried over.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. After I've had three or four drinks I will be, anyway.”

I pulled him into the cloakroom. There would be reporters roaming the ballroom tonight. The program itself wouldn't be much in the way of a story, but given the number of drinks that would be drunk tonight, a loose tongue just might give them a piece of gossip worthy of a lead story. I kept my voice low. “What happened?”

Ben wiped his face with his handkerchief. He needed to pull himself together. “There was this guy.” He shook his head. “I was talking to Susan, going over this list of people she had to make time for tonight. The heavy rollers. There was a knock on the office door and I went to it and there was this guy standing there. Susan had her back to me. She was studying the list. But when she turned around—I don't know how to describe it. I thought she was in shock or something. She just stared at him. And then he smiled at her. He scared her and he was enjoying it. All he said was, ‘I'll talk to you later, babe.'
Babe.
I couldn't believe it. Who the hell calls Susan ‘babe'?”

“Then what happened?”

“Then he left. Just like that.”

“What was Susan doing?”

“Sitting down. She just went over to the green armchair and sort of collapsed into it. I asked her if she was all right and she said yes, but I could tell she wasn't. She looked miserable—and scared. Then Kristin came back and she had notes she wanted to go over with Susan, so they got to work. It took a few minutes for Susan to be able to focus. But finally she got herself together as she worked with Kristin and then she finished up with me.”

“And that was it?”

“I wish. I told her I'd drive us to the hotel here. So we go outside—by this time it's pretty much dark—and as we're walking across the parking lot, there he is again.”

“Same guy who knocked on the door?”

“Right. He just walks out of nowhere and stands in front of us. He doesn't look at me at all. Just stares at Susan. And then he says: ‘I need a couple of minutes with you, Susan. Alone.' All she says is that she's in a hurry. She was lucky to even say that. I could tell she was in shock again. She grabbed my arm and damned near broke it, she was squeezing so hard. I told him to get out of our way and started for him. Then he said: ‘Tell him about me, Susan. Tell him what I do to people.' Then she kind of came out of it. Out of the shock, I mean. She said, ‘Ben, wait in the car, would you please?' I started to say hell no I wouldn't, but she shook her head and said that she'd be all right. She said, ‘This is something personal, Ben. And I need to handle it.' So what could I do? I went over and got in my car. I kept watching them. I wanted to make sure he didn't hurt her, physically, I mean. He's a scary bastard.”

“What's he look like?”

“Big, redheaded guy. Good-looking, I'll give him that. But he's rough. Everything about him is rough.”

I thought of the bellhop's description of the man who'd visited
Monica Davies. This was the same man who'd visited Susan in the campaign office and who had accosted her in the parking lot.

“What did she say when she got in the car?”

“Quote: ‘I don't want to talk about it. It's personal, Ben, and I ask you to respect that.' Unquote.”

A man came to the doorway and helped his wife out of her evening coat, ending my conversation with Ben. We all smiled at each other the way people do in commercials. Ben and I went back to the lobby, where we saw a small woman with a TV camera mounted on her shoulder and a sterile blond reporter interviewing an attractive older woman standing next to her attractive older husband. He seemed pleased that his wife would be on TV.

We went back into the ballroom. The tables were filling up. Black Velvet Elvis was doing a very nice arrangement of two Ricky Nelson songs. The front man could really sing.

Because this was Ben's territory he started table-hopping. He'd come to know the important people in district politics and he had to pay them their due. More TV toothpaste smiles.

I was just about to go over and get myself a glass of pop from the bar when somebody stumbled into me from behind. I turned to find Kristin there.

“Sorry, Dev. I tripped. I'm so upset I'm crazy.” Her blue eyes were frantic. She nodded to the lobby. “We need to talk.”

There were two more reporters in the lobby. Local TV. They were interviewing anybody they could grab because most of the attendees were hurrying inside. The formal ceremonies would start in less than ten minutes.

We found a shadowy corner next to a darkened gift shop.

“They have a little dressing room backstage. She's in there and she won't come out. She keeps telling me to go away.”

So much for Susan's ability to stay focused no matter what was going on around her.

“Any chance she'll come out in a few minutes?”

“I asked her that three times now. She won't answer. She just says to go away. And I have to pretty much whisper when I talk to her. There are a lot of people around backstage. They'll pick up on everything if I talk any louder. And there's press here. They'll love this.”