Trust No One Page 5

  “I’m not going to any press conference. I don’t want my name released.”

  Sever looked surprised at that—maybe even confused. “Anything you do want?” he asked. “This is a pretty big moment for you. A lot of powerful people will be looking to express their gratitude.”

  I thought about what Frank had said that night I’d come upon him watching the Zapruder film, how people damn themselves with a thousand small decisions. One compromised choice leads to six more, and it goes from there.

  “I don’t want anything,” I said. “You guys tricked me. I wasn’t a hero. I was just the dupe who carried the bomb.”

  “I think that’s the least flattering interpretation possible.”

  The bedside phone sounded, and Sever picked it up on a half ring. He’d been waiting right next to it. “Yes, he’s here.” He pressed the handset to his considerable chest. “President Bilton wants to express his gratitude to you.”

  I swallowed dryly. “As in the commander in chief?”

  “That’s right. He’ll have a window in about half an hour.”

  I glanced from my scorched clothes to the clean white walls, my lungs feeling tight. “Sorry, but I need to get out of here. I, uh …” Claustrophobia gripped me, and I couldn’t finish the thought.

  Sever looked at me, his mouth slightly agape. Then he muttered something into the phone and hung up.

  Wydell fixed his dark brown eyes on mine. “If you want to stay off the radar, that’s fine by us. But it’s important—no, essential—to national security that we don’t confuse the press or the public. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “Not really.”

  “The threat is over. It’s important that the public be made to feel at ease again.”

  “Listen,” I said, “I don’t want to have to go home and puzzle out what you’re trying to say. So just be clear about what you mean. Please.”

  His brow furrowed. “Okay. If you choose not to be officially recognized, we’d like you not to talk about the events of early this morning. Least of all to the press or media. It’s a closed chapter that’s best left that way. If there’s anything you have to say about it—anything at all, ever—our understanding is that you’re to come to us first. And as I said earlier, if there’s any way we can thank you for what you did, please let us know.”

  “There is one thing I’d like,” I said.

  “Anything.”

  I looked across at Sever. “Evelyn Plotkin, my neighbor. The one you shoved back into her apartment. She’s a nice lady. Collects Hummels. Member of Amnesty International. T-shirt with a picture of her grandkids on the front. That sort of stuff. I’d like you to apologize to her.”

  Sever’s tan face flexed, accenting the muscle beneath his cheeks.

  Wydell said, “That’s it? That’s all you want?”

  “That’s all.”

  He nodded at Sever. “I think we can arrange that.”

  I pulled on my sneakers. “Oh—sorry. One other thing.”

  Sever looked less obliging now. “What’s that?”

  I stood, cinching the hospital gown around my waist as best I could. “Can you help me get home?”

  I followed them out, Charlie’s key rattling soundlessly inside the heel of my shoe.

  CHAPTER 7

  A few ribbons of yellow crime-scene tape had been stretched haphazardly across the open doorway, a spiderweb that had lost its momentum. My door rested flat in the middle of my torn-up living room. I stood for a few moments in the hall, contemplating the mess. I was wearing an I L.A. T-shirt and baggy muscle pants from the hospital gift shop. My head was throbbing—I could feel the pulse intensified in the cut on my cheek—and the hallway lights seemed unusually bright. My mouth tasted bitter, like the rind of some fruit. I had been looking forward to getting home so much that it hadn’t occurred to me what would be waiting.

  I stepped through the tape, picked up the door, and rested it carefully back in place. I walked around and checked all the locks. Stupid, I know, given that the door was leaning against the frame, but old habits are hard to kill. I closed all the blinds, then surveyed the condo. When I got home, I usually checked that none of my things were out of place, another part of the ritual, but what was the point? Every drawer had been dumped. My books, bills, and papers had been rifled through and dropped unceremoniously.

  The TV had been moved to the carpet and Frank’s old steamer trunk flipped, jaws to the carpet, its contents strewn around my bedroom. I hadn’t gone through them in years. My first baseball trophy, broken at the base. The Punisher’s debut in Spider-Man. My dad, still smoking, still smiling in Kodachrome. All these artifacts, imprinted in my memory so strongly that seeing them felt like déjà vu. But they were also somehow altered, diminished. The shine of the trophy had worn off. The baseball cards looked faded. My father’s smile wasn’t as relaxed as I’d remembered, and it held an element of self-righteousness.

  Callie’s sketches had landed over by the IKEA bureau. The back porch of Frank’s house. Fernando Valenzuela at the near-topple phase of his Charlie Brown windup. A pear on our battle-scarred kitchen table. They transported me back in time as swiftly and vividly as the smell of fresh-mowed outfield grass. I unrolled the portrait of Frank and sat cross-legged on the floor with it. I’d forgotten how capable Callie was. She’d accented Frank’s lips and given him the benefit of the doubt on his nose, making him not more handsome but perhaps more refined. Yet she’d captured precisely the creases in his face, the depth and vigilance of those dark pupils.

  An image knifed into consciousness—me cradling that face while the body beneath it shuddered and failed. Half my life I’d spent running from that spotlit moment and the fallout from it.

  The ache in my knees drew me back into my present confusion. Tufts of couch stuffing, key in my shoe, the charcoal portrait of Frank in my lap. The acid flicking at the walls of my stomach reminded me why I’d consigned the sketch to the trunk, why the trunk had stayed closed. I rolled up the drawing and put it away with everything else, then set the TV back on the trunk to prevent it from leaping open like a horrormovie effect.

  My discomfort came to life as an itch under my skin. I clicked the remote, hoping the background noise would make me feel less alone. A “Reelect Bilton” spot oozed from the TV with an inspiring symphonic track. The commander in chief decked out in a sweater and khakis before the Oval Office desk, his high-school sweetheart still sedated at his side, surrounded by three generations of Biltons—grown children, itgeneration grandkids, and a few burbling great-grandsons. “Senator Caruthers says he doesn’t ‘understand family values.’ Do you really want someone in the White House who’s proud to make that claim?”

  Three channels over I found Wile E. Coyote on a precipice, about to misjudge his pendulum swing.

  I took a deep breath, contemplated my next move. I’d missed a morning interview, not good considering I was beholden to my ex-girlfriend for setting it up. Induma, a software engineer when we’d dated, had sold a storage-management application to IBM or Oracle for an obscene amount of money and for stock options that turned out to be worth even more. She now acted as a part-time guru, helping troubleshoot for the hundreds of companies and institutions using her system. They included Pepperdine, which offered a joint M.B.A./Master of Public Policy I’d had my eye on for a while.

  In the last eight years, I’d worked my way from soupkitchen ladler to co–executive director of an umbrella charity that channeled money to various programs for L.A.’s homeless. At thirty-five I had just convinced myself I was ready for something bigger. Last week I’d left to explore options and start studying for the standardized tests required for Pepperdine’s joint-degree program. And Induma had hooked me up with an informational interview with a dean of admissions; I didn’t want to screw up my chances, but even more I didn’t want to make her look bad.

  I picked up my cordless phone to give her a call. A chill tensed the skin on my arms, and I threw the phone
down on the bed. I found a screwdriver among the dumped-out tools at the bottom of the coat closet and pried the phone’s casing open. I lifted out the perforated disk of the receiver. No C-4. And no bugs, but I knew from Law & Order that these days they tapped calls from outdoor junction boxes. Deciding to play it safe, I left the phone dismantled on the kitchen counter.

  I headed into the bathroom, sat on the edge of the tub, and at long last wiggled the key from the sole of my shoe. Brass, like I remembered. Thicker than a house key. Stamped on the front, three uneven numbers: 229. On the back: U.S. GOV’T, UNLAWFUL TO DUPLICATE.

  An office in the Secret Service Building? A government vault? A safe-deposit box?

  A knock at the front door startled me. As I sprang up, a thud vibrated the floor. Jamming the key back into the air pocket of my sneaker, I scrambled out into my bedroom.

  A ginger-haired young man in his early twenties stood at an uncomfortable forward tilt, peering apologetically into my apartment, his fist still raised from knocking. He wore a white shirt, almost the shade of his skin, and a red paisley bow tie. The front door lay flat on its side just inside the threshold. We regarded each other, startled. I looked like an idiot or a schizophrenic—muscle pants, gift-shop T-shirt, eyes glassy with fatigue.

  “Uh, sorry. Mr. Horrigan?”

  “Nick.”

  “I’m Alan Lambrose. One of Senator Caruthers’s aides. The senator got into town late last night after the debate, and he’d like to thank you in person.”

  “Is that really a bow tie?”

  “It is. It’s sort of how I’m known. Senator’s aide with a bow tie.” He smiled brightly and fanned a hand down the hall. “I have a car waiting for you, if that’s okay.”

  I walked into the living room, the Aztec pattern of the muscle pants flashing with my movement, and gestured around. “Not the best time.”

  “Is there some way we can help?”

  “Sure. I’d like my door fixed.”

  “We’ll get that taken care of. And we’ll see that you’re reimbursed for the damage.”

  “Look,” I said, “I get it. There’s fifteen minutes of fame to be had. Everyone’s eager for me to have them, and to get a picture shaking my hand.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Every presidential candidate.”

  Alan’s pale lips firmed to suppress a smile, the first break in his wonkishness. “I won’t lie to you,” he said, “and pretend we’re not pleased you didn’t wait around for Bilton’s call.”

  “How do you know about that? Did Wydell tell you?”

  “I don’t know Wydell, but I can tell you that it became Service scuttlebutt before you left the hospital.”

  That struck me as odd and made me wonder at the reach of Caruthers’s influence. “I’d always thought the Service was about discretion,” I said carefully.

  “Times are different, I suppose,” Alan said. “Everything’s gone to shit and politics.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, please thank Senator Caruthers for the offer, but tell him I’ll take a pass. I need to … you know, figure out what to do here about my place.” I hoped I didn’t sound as helpless as I felt.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.” Alan withdrew.

  I tried shoving some of the stuffing back into the couch, growing increasingly frustrated. I wanted to restore something to its former shape, even a damn couch. But the more I fussed with it, the more the fabric tore and stretched, and after a while I gave up and sat, splay-legged and discouraged.

  When I looked up, Alan was in the doorway again, sliding his cell phone back into his pocket. “The senator told me I was an asshole for playing the political angle. He said he has no interest in publicizing his meeting with you. He just wants to meet you because he was such an admirer of your stepfather.”

  I considered this skeptically. But I remembered how Frank had always spoken about Caruthers. “Can I take a shower?”

  “I’m sorry, the senator’s on a bit of a schedule today.”

  He turned away obligingly while I changed. I kept the I L.A. shirt but switched out the muscle pants for jeans.

  “Watch your step there.” He held the crime-scene tape up for me as I ducked through the doorway, a boxer entering a ring.

  I followed him down the hall, on my way to meet the next president of the United States.

  Waiting for the elevator, Alan raised a hand, touched my shoulder. “You mind my asking why you’re so reluctant to be noticed?”

  “Yes,” I said, my thoughts yanked back seventeen years.

  I minded quite a bit.

  CHAPTER 8

  The open back door. The bloody streak across the floorboards. Frank, dead in my arms. Propped against his armchair, cradling his body, I went in and out. My arms cramped. My shirt was saturated, his blood growing cold against my skin.

  Then the phone was at my face, an operator squawking in my ear. Two buttons bore the mark of my bloody fingerprint, though I couldn’t remember dialing.

  There were sirens, and then cops and agents were there, though I didn’t recall them arriving. At some point much later, Callie appeared, sitting on Frank’s armchair, trembling. The detectives were telling her that Frank had been shot by his own gun. His watch was missing, and Callie’s fake-diamond bracelet and our shitty VCR. A botched robbery, probably a junkie. The perp had come in the back and left through the side door of the garage, which they’d found unbolted and swaying. With everything he was, Frank Durant had been killed by a third-rate lowlife.

  Yes he had. He’d been killed by me.

  When I told the authorities why I’d snuck out, Callie gave a muffled sob and walked out of the room. It cut me to the bone, that little sob and the universe of disappointment it contained.

  Night after night I sat in my room, listened to my mom crying through the thin walls. I can’t describe what those sounds did to me. Some of my earliest memories of Callie were after my dad died—the only few months I’d known her to smoke—standing outside with a long-burning cigarette after she thought I’d gone to sleep, her shoulders shaking. And I thought, This is her life again. This is her life now. And it’s because of me.

  I stayed home from school. I didn’t show up for playoffs. Caruthers himself called Callie to express condolences. She and I didn’t speak much—I could barely be in her presence, let alone meet her eye. I was completely lost, and there was no Frank to come in and figure out what not to tell me.

  She finally started taking sleeping pills and going down a little after ten o’clock at night, but I was still in such bad shape I could barely close my eyes to blink. I wandered the dark house, searching out traces of Frank. His coffee mug still in the sink, the brown ring inside. English Leather clinging to the dated sport coat over the back of the kitchen chair. His footprints in the matchbox garden. I felt his absence as broken glass in my stomach, my betrayal as the pounding of my heartbeat in my head.

  Once the food in the fridge spoiled, I threw it out and went to the convenience store to pick up some Crystal Light and frozen burritos for whenever Callie started eating again. Walking home at twilight, the 7-Eleven bags swinging around my knees, I became aware of a car creeping behind me. The sideview mirror of a parked truck afforded me a glimpse. Dark sedan, tinted windows, no front plate. It moved with me, matching my pace, for about a half block. My fear mounting, I kept on, fighting to hold my gaze ahead. Finally I could no longer resist, and when I whirled, the sedan screeched into a U-turn and sped away. I stared after it until I felt the plastic grocery bags cutting off the circulation in my fingers. The back plate had been missing, too.

  That night I found Callie sitting in Frank’s armchair, staring at the bleached spot on the floorboards, a white puddle to match the one Frank had left behind.

  “Mom?” Just calling her that made my voice falter.

  She looked up blankly.

  I said, “Frank was scared of something. Someone. I think whoever did it was waiting for the opening I gave them that night.
”

  Her anger caught me by surprise. “You don’t have to do this, Nicky. It’s a morbid fantasy. You heard the detectives. It was some druggie burglar.”

  “We live in Glendale, Mom. How many junkies have you seen around here?”

  “I don’t want you to be responsible for Frank’s death either. But this, your scenario, it isn’t real. Frank was always worried about security. It’s just part of who he is. Was. It just got worse. And worse. Don’t take on his paranoia.”

  “Whoever killed him was in the house when I was coming up the side run.” I pointed past her head at the facing wall, but she only pressed her eyes closed. “They think I saw something. Or that Frank told me something. They’re waiting and watching, like they did with Frank. I don’t know that it’s safe to be near me.”

  She was crying again. “Please don’t make me do this with you. Not right now. Please, Nicky. It’s nuts. The detectives said—and even the agents—they said it wasn’t …”

  “There was this car today. At a stop sign. A sedan, and the windows were—”

  She was on her feet. “There’s nothing. It was nothing. Or … or the PD and the Service said they’d send a car by. To keep an eye. That’s what they do after a murder. Or it was just some car, and you want it to—”

  “There was no license plate. They peeled out as soon as I—”

  “Stop it! Just—stop. I can find a way to live with … your mistake, and with Frank’s dying, but I will not live in this house one more day with this toxic paranoia.” Sobbing, she darted to the front door, threw back the dead bolts. She shoved the kitchen windows open, smashed at the alarm pad with her fist, then sagged against the counter, holding her hand. “Not one more day,” she said hoarsely. “Do you understand?”

  “Frank was scared of something, Callie. And we both know he didn’t scare easily.” I couldn’t shake the flurry of images—Frank fingering aside the curtain, wanding down his truck, that grainy flash by JFK’s head. “He couldn’t get backup either. So either the Service is involved or this is something too big for them.”