Eight

Abrams and I exchanged incredibly unlikely suggestions on how a dead man’s hair could make it into a live secretary’s apartment seven years after he met his end in Texas, but neither of us was terribly enthusiastic about our theories. Mine, that he had been put to death unbelievably slowly by watching an attractive woman have sex with all sorts of other men, was not entirely serious. Abrams suggested it would lead to a new form of cruel and unusual punishment: death by pornography.

I thanked him for the information, however weird, and went back to the hotel. Abby and the kids were at the pool again, but now I had time to put on a bathing suit and join them, thus delighting my children and disappointing all the other men at the pool, who had been watching my wife and hoping she was a divorcée or a widow. No, I’m not paranoid—they all are truly against me.

We spent the evening quietly, going out to a restaurant and avoiding all mention of Legs or Stephanie. After dinner, the kids retired to their lair to see if Fred Flintstone had come up with anything new to say since 1966 (it was new to them), while Abby and I headed to our bedroom to collapse into two separate exhausted heaps on the bed.

Since my wife is incapable of collapsing into an exhausted heap without doing at least 30 minutes of prep work in the bathroom, I had plenty of time to set the stage. I shut off all the lights in the room except the one over her pillow, then turned down Abby’s half of the bed. The hotel had been kind enough to supply a chocolate for her pillow, and I moved it to a spot just below there.

I stripped down to the boxers with the New York Yankees emblem she had gotten me as a gag gift for my latest birthday, and climbed under the blanket. So when Abby (finally) emerged from the bathroom, she saw a dimly lit, quiet hotel bed, lavishly made up, with a chocolate and a husband.

And, of course, on her pillow, a screenplay.

She laughed, then walked over and sat down, careful to pick up the chocolate first. She looked at me and determined that I was not, in fact, asleep. Then she looked at the script, and chuckled again.

“The Minivan Rolls for Thee?” she asked, looking at the title.

“Hemingway,” I said.

“I understood the reference,” she admonished. “I’m just wondering if it’s about. . .”

“It kind of is,” I said. “And it’s kind of not. You decide.”

Abby lay down, her short pajamas showcasing her magnificent legs. She picked up the script and opened it.

“You realize I’m not going to read it all tonight,” she said.

“Of course,” I told her. “I’ll be glad if you get past page one.”

She bent her magnificent legs to make a reading stand for the script, and got to work. I did my best not to watch, but then she chuckled, and I tried to catch a glimpse of which page she was on, to see what was funny, and whether it had been intentional.

“Stop watching me,” she said. “You know it makes me nervous.”

“I wasn’t watching you,” I told her. “I was ogling your legs.”

“That’s different.”

She went back to reading, and I lay there, eyes ostensibly closed, appreciating her. Okay, so I was watching to see if she’d find anything else amusing.

“You’re making this difficult,” she warned.

“Me? I’m as quiet as a mouse.”

“A mouse with a pair of binoculars.”

“They’re still quiet,” I pointed out.

Abby tried valiantly, and I even turned away at one point, relying on the inevitable closet mirror to watch her. She caught me looking at her in the mirror, and closed the script.

“Don’t stop,” I said.

She leaned over and put the script on her nightstand, then turned off the light and reached over to me. Abby pulled me close to her and kissed me with an impressive amount of passion for a woman who’d spent all day shepherding two children around our nation’s capital.

“C’mere,” she said.

“Two nights in a row? You’ll do anything to avoid reading that script with me in the room, won’t you?”

“Pretty much,” she said.

The next morning (ahem!), I got up early to meet Stephanie and her sons at Steph’s house, and left a note for Abby saying I’d meet her and the kids at the hotel before checkout time.

By the time I navigated the minivan into a parking space near Stephanie’s house, I was a wreck. If you have a car, Washington makes even less sense than most cities. They even have streets that are one-way at certain times of the day, and two-way the rest of the time. Now, that’s entertainment.

So I was a wee bit late when Steph opened the door. She had been kind enough to put out a basket of muffins and bagels on the table, along with a pot of coffee and, in my honor, a smaller pot of real hot chocolate. The woman had class, I’ll give her that.

Stephanie introduced me to her sons. The taller one, Lou Jr., looked me straight in the eye. He has dark, straight hair and no doubt is his grandmother’s favorite. You couldn’t find Semitic blood in this kid if you went in with a sewer snake.

He shook my hand like he was damn glad to know me, and even smiled—the same smile Legs had in all the newspaper clip photos. I tried not to dislike the kid too quickly on the basis of his accidental similarity to a noted asshole.

“How can we help you, Mr. Tucker?” My god, the private schools really had done a bang-up job on this one. He’d be President of the United States by the end of the week.

“Well, if your mother will be so kind as to leave us to our business. . .” Stephanie nodded unhappily, took a worried glance at Jason, which I noticed, and closed the door behind her. I looked back at Junior.

“You two have been away at school, is that right?” Always best to start off with something easy, unless you have only one question to ask.

“Well, I’ve been at college, but it’s just Georgetown,” Junior began. (“Just Georgetown.” That’s like saying, “I have a car, but it’s just a Porsche.”) “So I’m around here pretty frequently. I have an apartment near school, but that’s not far from here, either.”

I turned to Jason, who had been standing near the window, but unlike his grandmother, facing into the room. He was lighter in complexion and hair, and his eyes looked wary. Clearly, the better interview, because he wasn’t as sure of himself, and might say something he wasn’t supposed to.

“How about you, Jason?”

“Pringley. It’s in Annapolis.” It wasn’t a mumble, but it might just as well have been. Jason wanted out of this room, and now.

“Is it too far for you to visit often?” Now I sounded like my own mother.

“No, I come down once a month or so.”

“When did you see your father last?”

There was a bit of eye contact between the two before Junior decided to answer for both of them. “I saw him the night before it. . . happened. . . and Jason was here the week before that,” he said.

“Anything unusual? Did he seem tense, or distracted?”

There was no hesitation this time. “No.”

“Anything going on between him and your mother?”

“No.” Jason still hadn’t moved a muscle, nor was he attempting to answer for himself.

“What kind of relationship did you have with your father?”

Junior looked surprised. “He was my father,” he said, with a degree of “how-stupid-are-you” in it.

“Marvin Gaye’s father shot and killed him. What was your relationship like?”

“I respected him,” Junior said, his eyes burning death rays into my skull. “He had accomplished an enormous amount, and he was still a relatively young man.”

“How about you, Jason?”

I have no doubt that Jason was about to acquiesce to my brilliant line of questioning, but he never had the chance. The dining room door opened, and Lester Gibson walked in. Both boys seemed uneasy, almost alarmed, at his entrance, and now they both fell silent.

“So, how have the boys been doing, Mr. Tucker?” Lester asked, all bonhomie and good feelings. You’d have thought that we hadn’t exchanged epithets the last time we met. Politics, it would seem, is a genetic condition.

“They’ve been doing just fine, Lester,” I said. “Thanks for dropping in to check.” I flashed a look toward the door, but he wasn’t buying. He actually sat down, just to Jason’s left. Junior’s eyes never left Lester, but Jason was doing all he could not to look at the man.

“Good to hear. We wouldn’t want to hold anything back from the press, now, would we?” Lester took a croissant from the basket that I would have sworn had only bagels and muffins (it was a sure bet he wouldn’t take a bagel) and bit off a corner. He appeared pleased, and nodded his head, as if the maitre d’ was in the room, agonizing over whether Lester’s croissant was adequate.

“That’s a very refreshing attitude, Lester,” I said. “Now, if you don’t mind. . .”

He waved a hand, minor royalty giving the commoners permission to continue their drab, dreary lives. “Not at all. Pretend I’m not even here.”

“I’d prefer not pretending,” I told him.

Jason’s eyes rotated in their sockets a bit, and Junior looked positively shocked. “How dare. . .” he began.

“I don’t see how my presence would cause a disruption,” said Lester, cutting him off. He wasn’t looking at me—his eyes were admonishing Junior for his near-outburst.

“Your presence has already caused a disruption,” I explained in a calm tone. “You’ve ruined the admittedly lousy rapport I’d established with the guys here, and now you’re making it impossible for me to continue with this interview. Was that your goal? Because both times you’ve been in the room, my interviews were cut quite short.”

Lester didn’t so much stand as rise—it was a smooth motion that appeared to have less to do with legs, which have all sorts of bones and joints that can make for jerky motion, and more to do with the perfect, ethereal right of the privileged to their indignation.

“You will leave this house immediately,” he hissed.

“Since when is it your house?” I purred at him. “Get Stephanie to tell me to go.”

Lester looked toward the door, considering, but this time, Junior cut him off.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “This is still my house, and I’m asking you to leave, Mr. Tucker.”

So I left. I drove the minivan back to the hotel, met my lovely wife and children, packed up everything we could legitimately call our own, and checked out. By the time we hit the Beltway, I had my cell phone in hand, and was pushing the button to call Mahoney.

“Hello?

“Mr. Mahoney.”

“Mr. Tucker. How was Washington?”

“I’m still there, but I’m on my way back. I have an assignment for you.”

“Broken fan belt?”

“No. I’m getting a handle on the Legs Gibson thing. But I’m going to need to consult with a panel of experts.”

“Such as. . .”

“A carpet expert, a medical expert, a political expert, an accountant, and someone who understands the workings of a major airport.”

“Aha.”

“Precisely. Set up an evening with The Guys.”