The Accident (26 page)

Brad had never been much of a drinker. He doesn’t enjoy the impairment, and he especially hates the hangover. A few times a year, at an awards ceremony or a book party or a benefit, he’ll mistakenly have a third drink, or even a fourth, and he invariably regrets it. Not just the physical feeling, but the thoughts he had, the decisions he made. On the other hand, he’s never regretted what he’s done when stoned. And he’s been getting high now for forty years.

Trey picks up his phone, opens the back, pops out the battery, and places the two pieces on the same table. “Would you mind?” he asks.

Brad, flummoxed, retrieves his phone, and removes the case, and turns the thing over, around, again. “I can’t …,” he shrugs. “I don’t see how …”

“Waiter?” Freeley beckons the old African American guy, bow-tied and stooped. “Could I ask you to safe-keep this at the maître d’ stand?”

The old guy nods, holds McNally’s phone as if it’s the pillow for the crown jewels.

“You never know” is all Freeley offers by way of explanation. “A few months ago, McNally,” the lawyer continues, without any further discussion of the phone, “I get a call from the DCI. Tells me that a guy would be callin’ me, and that I should take that meetin’. I of course do.

“So this man, he shows up with a phony name but a genuine cashier’s check for an hour of my time, wantin’ to learn about the book business. So I explain it to him. And then he admits that he’s wonderin’ about a very specific type-A situation. Interested to know how it would work.”

The waiter delivers Brad’s beer, and a fresh bowl of nuts.

“It’s a hypothetical biography,” Freeley continues, “of a media mogul.”

Brad blanches. “Who was this guy?”

“Dunno. Couldn’t find anythin’ on him.”

“Which means what?”

“My guess is that he’s workin’ for the Agency, in some type-A covert capacity. Maybe he’s ex-Agency, or somethin’ else in the national security apparatus. And I suspect that this guy’s job is to prevent this book from bein’ published.”

Brad fights the urge to panic. “Why do you think that?” As calmly as possible, which isn’t that calm.

“Because I know who wrote it, McNally.” The lawyer pops a cashew into his mouth.

“Well?”

The big man shifts in his seat, leans toward Brad. “A year ago, Charlie Wolfe started puttin’ out feelers, quietly, about runnin’ for Senate. Did you catch wind of this?”

Brad shakes his head. This isn’t the type of gossip that reaches him; nor would he pay attention if it did.

“As part of his strategy, Wolfe had begun the process of writin’ a book, a memoir, with prescriptive elements—you know, the same bullshit everyone writes when they run for office. An excuse to be on the
Today
show and
Face the Nation
, profiles in
Newsweek
and the
Journal
”—waving a hand at the cast-aside newspaper.

“Aren’t those books how you make your living, Trey?”

“Well that doesn’t mean I like ’em, now does it?”

“I guess not.”

“Early on, Wolfe himself came to see me about the book, lookin’ for advice; I knew his father, who sent him my way. Charlie was writin’ with his lieutenant, who was doin’ most-a the heavy liftin’, and all the actual typin’. I put together a quickie collaboration agreement for them. They worked on this project for a couple-three months, somethin’ like that. Then the coauthor? He up and killed himself.”

“You’re saying this is the submission we received?” Brad can’t quite wrap his mind around this. “You’re saying that Charlie Wolfe himself is the author?”

“Well,
author
is somethin’ of a misnomer in this situation. I’m sayin’ that most of the
information
in this book came from Charlie Wolfe. But some of the story—I imagine there are damagin’ aspects to it—was filled in by someone else. Perhaps
invented
by someone else.”

“Who?”

“The same person who was workin’ on the book to begin with. His college friend, his chief strategist, and his coauthor, all rolled into one tidy package.”

“That’s Dave Miller.”

“That’s correct.”

“But Dave Miller is dead.” Brad realizes he’s on the edge of his seat, about to pitch forward onto the rug, which is the size of a basketball court. Maybe bigger. He forces himself to lean back in his chair. “He faked his suicide?”

“That’s certainly possible.”

Brad rolls this around in his brain, staring across the room toward immense windows, tremendous sheets of streakless glass set into gleaming polished brass. “So you’re saying that when Miller found out he had terminal cancer, he had some sort of crisis of conscience, or … or whatever, and decided he wanted to finish this book project. To get the full Charlie Wolfe story into the world.”

Freeley drains the last of his drink, says nothing.

“But he couldn’t just sit there in his living room in Washington, typing away on a computer. Because if Wolfe has skeletons in his closet, he’d never let Miller do this. In fact, he’d make extra-sure that this was exactly what Miller
wasn’t
doing. Wolfe would do what …? He’d have Miller’s phones bugged, computer hacked, house monitored …”

The waiter arrives, and replaces Freeley’s empty glass with a fresh full one.

“And if there’s anyone in the world who would know how Wolfe
would react, and what he would do to quash the book, it’s Miller. But still Miller wanted to
—needed
to—publish it. So he faked his suicide. He disappeared somewhere with the old research material, and spent a half-year—is that how long ago he supposedly died?—to finish writing the book.”

Freeley takes a sip of his amber liquid, plunks his heavy glass down onto the thick coaster on the thin tabletop.

“That’s an awful lot of trouble to go to, for a man on his deathbed. Why would he?”

Freeley still doesn’t say anything. He wants Brad to figure out the same thing he figured out, in the same way, without any help. Freeley wants the confirmation that this is the inevitable interpretation.

“Because Wolfe did something truly horrible,” Brad concludes. “That’s the only way this makes sense. There’s something in Wolfe’s past that’ll absolutely ruin him. Ruin other people too. And that’s what’s in the book.”

Brad thinks Freeley nods, or maybe it’s just the motion of chewing nuts.

“And of course Wolfe is certainly aware of his own past, and of the danger. So he’d do anything—
any
thing—to prevent this.” Now it all makes total sense. “Listen, Trey: somebody strange came to see me too. Possibly the same guy who came to see you.”

The lawyer looks up.

“It was a few months ago. And the guy claimed to be NSA, but I had no way of knowing if that was true. Anyway, he told me that if we received a submission like this—a biography of Wolfe, one that contained bombshell revelations—then it’d be a fake. A hoax, being perpetrated for the purpose of orchestrating a hostile corporate takeover.”

Freeley chews on this. “And this man, what did he want from you?”

“He was telling me—he was
order
ing me—to contact him if we received this.”

“And have you?”

“Not yet. I called you. What are my options, Trey?”

“Options?”
Freeley rummages around in the nut bowl, digging for something, finds it. “You don’t have any options, McNally.” He pops another cashew.

“But what about the First Amendment? What about freedom of the press? What about an informed citizenry being the only true repository of the public will?”

Freeley snorts. “This isn’t civics class, McNally. And you’re not a crusader, or a revolutionary. You’re a book publisher, McNally. A
business
man.”

Brad shifts in his chair.

“And maybe,” the lawyer continues, “the manuscript
is
a hoax.” He leans forward, rests his elbows on his haunches. “Maybe this is another failure of imagination, on our part … I mean, a fake biography
would
be sorta genius, wouldn’t it?”

“Whose side are you on, Trey?”

“Ha! Side?! I’m not on anyone’s
side
. I don’t have skin in this game, McNally. And you need to remember that
neither do you
.” Freeley leans back in his chair, satisfied with his own certainty.

“Trey?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have any idea what’s
in
the book?”

“No, McNally, and I don’t care to. Neither should you.”

CHAPTER 33

I
sabel walks past the cashier and around the fast-food counter, the stench of nitrates laying siege to her nostrils, hot dogs rotating on their bed of steel rods. The bathroom is incomprehensibly large, room for three or even four times the number of facilities, and reeks of industrial-grade cleaner. She relieves herself, and washes her hands, and splashes water on her face. She smooths her hair, and stares into the mirror. She wonders, again, if this is going to work. And what’s going to happen if it doesn’t.

Isabel plucks a few paper towels. Picks her bag off the floor, walks to an uncluttered corner of the restroom. She wipes down the floor with the towels, then carefully upends the contents of her bag onto this cleanish surface. She sorts through everything, all the familiar items, the compact and wallet and lipsticks and business-card case and sunglasses and other whatnots. The rubber-band-bound manuscript. All this stuff is definitely hers; nothing unfamiliar.

She takes the empty bag itself in hand, the crumpled pile of black leather and steel studs and zippers and clasps, with a designer’s nameplate riveted to the side. A conspicuously expensive bag, the shackles of a peculiar form of slavery. She loathes the impulse that made her buy it, another lemming at a boutique, casually sliding her credit card onto the gleaming counter as if a sixteen-hundred-dollar handbag were just another daily purchase, a dozen eggs, a bottle of shampoo.

She runs her hand along the surface of the bag, her fingertips rubbing one leather plane, another, another. Along the seams, across the bottom. She doesn’t feel anything strange, doesn’t see anything abnormal.

And then finally she does, a stud of a different size, in the wrong spot. She folds the leather over itself and brings it closer to her face and glances down at this thing. It isn’t a stud at all, but a different type of little metal disk. She pinches it between two fingertips, and pulls, and the small rivet-like shape slides out smoothly. She turns it over, examines the sharp pin that affixed this thing that’s not hers to the thing that is.

This is it, the tracking device. This is what had been attached to her bag at the restaurant, way back at breakfast, when that man brushed past her. This is how she was followed, when it was impossible to have been followed.

She puts the device back on the floor. Uses her toe to push the little thing into the gray grout at the corner where the white wall tile meets the taupe vinyl flooring, exactly where something like this would fall if it somehow detached from her bag, and got kicked into a corner inadvertently by someone who never felt the little piece of metal touch her toe.

So now Jeffrey’s compromised cell phone is in the East River, and his bugged pen is probably in the pocket of some tourist from the Empire State Building. Isabel’s cell is in that woman’s green bag, and this little device here is lying in a film of disinfectant on a gas-station restroom floor. They should now be completely free of surveillance. Electronic surveillance, that is.

And with the purchase of the gas using someone else’s credit card, it will appear that Isabel is running from the city and trying to hide, but failing. Whoever is tracking her will still think—will still be certain—that her destination is her client Judy’s beach house in Amagansett.

Isabel has known for hours that she was being tracked. She made a show of being elusive, in order to make the next elusion successful. Or at least to appear to be successful. It is not a straightforward cat-and-mouse situation.

She walks back through the convenience store, grabs a couple of
things without particularly thinking, pays in cash, pretends to notice the security camera and quickly turns away, hiding her face from the lens.

She returns to the gassed-up Mercedes, clutching a Diet Coke and a bag of pretzels, slipping the new pack of cigarettes into her sanitized handbag.

Jeffrey pulls out of the service station, onto a quiet exurban road that suddenly turns into a cluttered commercial stretch. Isabel notices the sign for an outlet mall, and something occurs to her. “Pull in here,” she says.

“We’re going
shopping
?”

They hustle into a chain store, men’s clothing on one side, women’s on the other. “Choose new pants and shirt,” she says. “Meet me at the register.”

When their transaction is finished—cash, again—she leads Jeffrey back out to the endless stretch of glass-fronted storefronts, finds restrooms in a brightly lit hall with vending machines and water fountains. “Go change,” she says. “Throw your old clothes in the garbage.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“There could be tracking devices on them. Or transmitting. Or whatever. Just do it.”

O
n the road again, speeding alongside expanses of sod, the flat emerald tracts presided over by massive irrigation sprinklers, looking like the landing apparatuses of UFOs. They drive past fields of corn and potatoes, plant nurseries and paddock fencing, the small nylon flags on the greens of golf courses, flapping in the breeze. White-clapboard churches, tall and tight and towering into the bright blue sky. Farmstands boasting local produce, homemade pie, on hand-painted signs.

The road curves and dips and rolls under a leafy canopy, then emerges into the open, with fields and sky on either side. There are now more grapevines than anything, with signs every few miles to
TURN HERE
for a winery, a tasting room, a vineyard. They catch their first sight of the
water, along a rocky-sandy strip of a beach. Then the road leaves the shoreline again, through woods and a hodgepodge of houses, vinyl-sided split-levels and modest little Capes and ill-proportioned contemporaries, then a cluster of Victorians in a dense village, then all at once the trees and houses fall away and there’s water everywhere, left and right, sailboats and whitecaps and long stretches of pebbly beach.