With Malice

The squad room was curiously quiet as Karen walked in and sagged into her chair. She was alone but for Dave Previn, who seemed to be trying to bury his head in his hands as he talked on the phone. Karen switched on her computer and spread her notes on her desk. She needed to get the initial reports in while the information was fresh, but her mind rebelled at the thought of anything but sleep. Previn finally hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. When their eyes met, he spoke.

“You wouldn’t think planning a boy’s tenth birthday party would be this frigging complicated. But Linda wants to go all out. And it has to matter to me whether the picture on the cake is a Buccaneers’ helmet or their flag.”

“And good morning to you, too,” Karen said simply. “Go with the helmet.”

“You think I’m going to call her back?” He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Not this little gray duck.”

His face said what everyone in the office knew, but no one talked about: his marriage was a mess. She looked around. “So where is everyone?”

Dave gave a disgusted look. “Task force meeting. Apparently the College Hill drive-by opened up a whole can of worms. The civil rights caucus says we’re not doing enough to stop the violence in the projects. The mayor has egg on his face. Now it’s top priority and all that. Like we wouldn’t care about murder otherwise.”

Karen nodded. “To protect and to serve, right?”

“Whatever. Oh, and the lieutenant wants to see you about the Senator Lawrence thing. Probably another task force in the making. We ought to form a task force on task forces.”

“The lieutenant’s not in on the College Hill thing?”

“Sure he is. He wants you to interrupt him. So congratulations, Karen. You’re front-page news.”

She rose from her seat. “Just what I always wanted.”

The task force had taken over the largest conference room on the floor. From the sounds she heard outside the door, tempers were fraying. She considered going back to write her reports, to let Lieutenant Simpson calm down before she met with him. But he would probably be even angrier if she did.

With a brief knock, she opened the door and stepped into a chaotic swirl of voices and a view of Fred Lowery gesturing at a dry-erase board scrawled with multi-colored threads of preliminary evidence. Warren Simpson sat at the near end of the table, paperwork intermixed with the foam-boxed leftovers of McDonald’s pancakes and sausage, syrup-dappled paper napkins and an extra large coffee mug that was his office trademark. The voices quieted as she entered—a brief symphony of terse “Hiyas” and “What’s ups?”—and Simpson turned to look.

He reached for his mug. “Excuse me, y’all.” His baritone voice poured out like molasses, thick and rich. Without another word, he rose and led Karen out and to his office, closing the door behind them. His eyes swept over her briefly. “You look like you need to sit down.”

“At least,” Karen said. “A few hours’ sleep wouldn’t hurt, either.”

He nodded. “Seems to be an epidemic around here. So what’s the deal on the Lawrence case?”

Cases were usually referred to by the victim’s name. In almost any other situation, this would be the Reese case, but Abigail Reese was as subsumed in death as she had been in life.

Or maybe not. Maybe it was simply that she really was part of the Lawrence family. That option left less of a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Apparently she surprised a burglar. He may have been after some of the senator’s files.” She gave him a quick rundown of her morning. “But there’s more to it. Jerry Connally—the senator’s chief of staff or some such—was holding something back.”

Simpson grunted. “Hardly surprising.” He leaned forward. “Okay, here’s the deal. We have two messes in the making, and the media are going to be all over both of them. Any other month and I’d put a half-dozen detectives on this with you. No stone unturned and all that. But if I do that, the civil rights caucus will play the race card, saying we’re more worried about a rich white senator than we are about poor black kids dying in the streets.”

“Never mind that Abigail Reese was a black woman,” Karen said.

“Right. And never mind that cleaning out the projects would take a hell of a lot more than just busting the gang-bangers. Regardless, the mayor has spoken—and loudly.” He paused for a moment, drawing tiny circles on his desk blotter. “And you know what? In the big scheme of things, the mayor might be right. So College Hill gets as much as we can put there. Which means you’re on point with Senator Lawrence.”

What he said made sense on a lot of levels. And it was true that, in the big scheme of things, it might well be better to focus the city’s efforts at trying to bring some measure of safety and hope to the bleak lives in the projects. Abigail Reese’s murder, however ugly and awful, did not seem to be a symptom of a festering cancer in the city. The College Hill murders were, without doubt.

She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“So what’s your caseload right now?”

“Not too bad. I have six active cases, plus the two from tonight. The state attorney says he’ll probably get pleas on four of them. The Hart case goes to trial next month. And I’m still waiting on ballistics on Vance. If they come back positive—and they will—that’ll plead out, too.”

“So you’re clear except for Lawrence.”

“And the girl in the alley,” Karen said.

“I’ll pull you off that. Previn can take it.”

Karen shifted in her seat. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir. Previn’s only been here three months. He’s not ready to solo.”

And the unidentified white female deserved better than to get swept aside onto a rookie homicide detective whose marriage was crumbling before his eyes. The sight of her torn body still lingered in Karen’s eyes.

Simpson studied her face for a moment. “Okay. So you keep an eye on Previn on the alley thing. But you need to keep your focus on Lawrence. You’re going to get a lot of attention. Don’t fuck up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Randall Youngblood scanned the e-mail once again. Like any prominent businessman, he’d had his share of dealings with the media. Some good, some not. Over the years, he’d made a practice of cultivating friendships with reporters whose views or stories were sympathetic. In return, he would slip them advance notice of any news from his industry. One hand washed the other.

He had known the reporter from whom he’d received this e-mail for twelve years. It wasn’t the first time the man had given him a heads-up on a story that might affect him. The story would break on that day’s television news, but the TV folks wouldn’t mention the jimmied files or their contents. The newspapers might, but probably not for a few days. The immediate coverage would focus on the senator’s lifelong relationship with his nanny. Vague possibilities of political maneuvering, or worse, would be unseemly. So he had a few days’ lead time.

He tapped the intercom button on his phone and entered a three-digit extension. “Michaels, are you busy? Well, you just got busier.”

Four minutes later, Bill Michaels strode into his office. Michaels never walked. He strode. He’d been an Olympic gymnast in college, and his smallish but solid frame still moved with a dancer’s grace. More than one opponent in a courtroom or across a negotiating table had taken the wrong first impression from that. It was not a mistake to be made twice. Bill Michaels was as savvy a legal predator as had ever hefted a briefcase.

“Grant Lawrence’s nanny was killed last night,” Randall said without preamble.

Michaels nodded. “I heard something about it on the radio news.”

“Well, you didn’t hear this part. Apparently someone broke into his office files. Including his S.R. 52 files. We had nothing to do with that.” If that was a question, it demanded only one answer.

“Of course not, sir.”

“Fine. I’ll stand by that.” Randall leaned back and propped his feet on the bottom drawer of his desk. “So…how can we take advantage of this?”

Bill considered. “We’ve got a few days before that breaks.”

“I’d think so, although with the goddamn piranhas in the media, I wouldn’t book odds on it.”

Michaels nodded. “Very well, sir. I want to refresh my memory on all circumstances surrounding Lawrence’s life and political activities. I’ll return with a report in two or three hours.”

Randall Youngblood nodded. Then he put his feet firmly on the floor and faced Michaels. “Grant Lawrence and I go way back, Michaels. Sometimes we agree, and sometimes we disagree. I don’t hate the man.”

“I understand that, sir.”

“Be sure you do.” Then he waved a hand, dismissing Michaels, and propped his feet up again. It was a damn good thing he had a piranha of his own.

Breaking the news to Belle and Catherine Suzanne proved to be absolutely, without question, one of the most painful experiences of Grant Lawrence’s life. It had been bad enough when he’d been told he might need to wear a brace or use a crutch for the rest of his life—he’d beaten that one pretty good, thank God—and it had been really tough to try to explain to a five-year-old Cathy that her mother would never come home again.

But this one was infinitely harder. In the first place, Belle was no longer a baby, so he had two pairs of horrified, disbelieving, stunned blue eyes looking back at him, innocent blue eyes that were unable to fully grasp one of the world’s greatest evils: death.

And there was his own emotional devastation. Grant had loved Abby in a way he had loved no one else. It hurt to speak of her death, hurt to try to explain to the daughters he loved beyond life that one of their mainstays was gone forever. It hurt like hell.

But he got the words out, forced them past a throat so thick and tight that each one was squeezed. He managed to remind them that when people died they went to live with God and the angels, and that even now Abby was looking down on them and watching over them, even though they would no longer see her.

Belle, in all seriousness, wanted to know what angel song Abby was probably learning right now. For several moments, Grant couldn’t even speak. He bit his lip hard and closed his eyes against a tidal wave of anguish and loss. What song would an angel sing?

All he could think of was a section of the liturgy of the Catholic Mass.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat and trying to smile at Belle, “I imagine the first song she’s learning is Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth….”

“But, Daddy, we sing that in church.”

“I know, sweetie. I think the angels taught us, too. But Abby went to a different church. I don’t think she knows that song, so they’re probably teaching it to her. I mean, she already knows so many hymns that they’d hardly teach her one she knows.”

Belle nodded, satisfied. “I’ll sing it, too. Abby will sing it with me.”

Grant’s heart fractured along a fresh fault line, but he held the ache inside. “Abby would like that.” Then he looked at Cathy Suzanne, who had so far not said a word. She looked back solemnly at him, her gaze conveying a wider understanding of death than Belle’s. But of course. She was older, and she still remembered her deceased mother.

Finally Cathy spoke. “She was getting old, Daddy.”

“Yes.” He didn’t want her to know yet that age hadn’t been the demon.

“She told me once that she might die before too long because she was getting old. She said she’d be sorry to leave us, but she was beginning to ache for her home in heaven.”

“She did?”

Cathy nodded, still solemn, and turned away. “I know Abby didn’t believe in our church,” she said quietly, “but I think I’ll say a rosary anyway.”

“Me too,” said Belle, racing to get her rosary beads.

Once her sister had left the room, Cathy looked into her father’s eyes. “Daddy? It’s okay to cry.”

And as soon as he was alone, that was exactly what he did.

Jerry arrived about one-thirty. On any other day, Grant might have noticed just how worn, jumpy and unhappy Jerry looked. On any other day he might have been concerned for his old friend. Today they were both pole-axed, and there didn’t seem much unusual about Jerry’s state.

He took his aide out into the gardens. Grant’s parents lived far more opulently than he did, and it was possible to get lost on their estate, built long ago when Florida land was cheap and the snowbirds hadn’t begun to arrive in large numbers. The days when the Don CeSar hotel had been the place for Hollywood types to vacation. In the gardens of the elder Lawrences, it was possible to disappear.

Which was exactly what he did with Jerry. He guided him to the farthest reaches of the gardens, to a place where there was a nook with a stone bench beneath a trellis covered in roses.

“Okay,” Grant said when they were sitting side-by-side, a gentle onshore breeze reaching them. “What did you get me into?”

“I didn’t get you into anything,” Jerry said firmly. “I got myself into something, and we’re going to leave it that way.”

“What about Stacy?” Grant’s voice broke on the name.

“She was dead, Grant. What the hell difference does it make, as long as your chances for the presidency, and S.R. 52, don’t get derailed? Dead is dead.”

Grant didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. “Jerry, tampering—”

“Don’t say that word. I’m a lawyer. I know the situation. What I don’t want is for you to know it, so will you just stop badgering me? For all you know, I heard of Stacy’s death elsewhere.”

Grant hesitated, looking down at the pebble path, at the gleam of his polished shoes, thinking he’d been wearing this suit for two straight days and he was probably beginning to stink. Thinking about irrelevancies in order to avoid the bigger issues.

“Sometimes,” he said slowly, “I just want to tell that detective everything.”

“Everything? What? Just what is the everything you think you know? Believe me, Grant, you don’t know, so just shut up about it.”

Jerry rarely talked to him that way. It was a sign of his distress, and Grant recognized it. He looked at his friend, taking in the tightness of Jerry’s face, the sagging of his mouth, the wariness of his eyes.

“All right,” he said finally. His heart was heavy with it, but he knew it was time for compromise. Politics had taught him that there was very little room in the world for sheer altruism. One hand washed the other. Compromises were the means of achievement, and some things were better left unsaid.

Whatever Jerry had done, Grant had to keep his mouth shut about it. He had to protect his friend; he had to protect himself and his children. He had to protect his shot at the presidency.

There was too much at stake here to indulge in an orgy of soul-baring that wouldn’t help a damn thing. It certainly wouldn’t bring Abby or Stacy back.

“You’re safe with me,” he told Jerry.

Jerry’s hollow eyes looked back at him. “I hope you know you’re safe with me, too.”

Grant nodded, but given what had happened overnight, given that there was now a secret between them that he could only guess at, he wasn’t as sure of that as he might have been only yesterday.

Shortly after Jerry left, Randall Youngblood called. The call might have gone unanswered except that the weekly maid was there and picked it up.

Grant took the call in his parents’ study, sitting in the deep leather chair that over the years had become contoured to his father’s body. “Hello?” he said.

“Grant.” The use of his first name was a signal that this was to be a personal conversation. Grant relaxed a shade. He was not up to a political discussion right now. “I’m sorry,” Youngblood continued. “I heard the news a little while ago. I am so sorry.”

Grant had to swallow before he could answer. It surprised him how painful an expression of sympathy could feel. “Thanks.”

“I just want you to know…well, I’m laying off for a week, okay? I won’t lobby until you get back in the saddle.”

“That’s very good of you.” And only slightly surprising. In this game, nobody burned bridges lightly, because you never knew when you might become allies. He and Randall Youngblood were opponents right now, but there had been times when they’d been allies, and there would be again.

“It seems like the right thing to do,” Youngblood said. “You’ve got enough to deal with right now. Just let me know if I can do anything.”

“Thank you. I will.”

But after he hung up, Grant sat a while, thinking about how important blocking this bill was to Youngblood and his cohorts. And wondering what Youngblood would be doing during this hiatus on public lobbying.

Because he knew Youngblood and company weren’t going to halt completely.

As Cathy Suzanne would say, “No way, Jose.”

5

Randall Youngblood was rarely an impatient man. He’d been in agribusiness, and on the cane growers’ association board, too long to have remained impatient. All things developed in their own damn time, and pushing and pulling rarely accomplished anything.

But this day he was impatient. He smelled blood. The question was whether it was his blood, his and the rest of the cane growers, or whether it was Grant Lawrence’s blood. He knew which way he needed to tip the scales, but waiting for Bill Michaels to come back to him was proving very difficult.

Standing at his window in the penthouse office of a tall building in Miami, he looked out toward the Glades and considered his situation. The simple fact was, the death of Abby Reese, a figure who was known to the public to be well-loved by Grant Lawrence, was going to create a firestorm of sympathy for the senator. Hell, he felt an aching sympathy himself. But that sympathy had to be stemmed somehow, or S.R. 52 might sail through the Senate and House as an act of political compassion. Even if it was enough to tip the scales just a little bit more toward Grant, it could wind up being a done deal.

As a cane grower, Randall Youngblood knew very well how too many environmental restrictions were going to kill both his business and much of the most important business of south Florida. Depriving the growers of their right to use fertilizers and insecticides, demanding that large areas of the river of grass, now dry, be gradually returned to their previously flooded state, thus wiping out massive acreage now in production, would be an economic disaster.

Because if the Florida growers couldn’t keep their prices down, foreign supplies of cane sugar would become the cheaper alternative.

It wasn’t that Randall Youngblood didn’t care about the coral reefs along the Keys, or the state of the water and fisheries out there. He did care. But he also cared that he and his colleagues not be wiped out in a headlong rush to undo eighty years of draining, reclaiming and planting.

S.R. 52 would cause reclamation to happen far too fast. It would wipe out lives and livelihoods beyond anything he figured Grant Lawrence had even imagined. Things like this needed to be taken very, very slowly. And Lawrence didn’t seem to understand that.

The senator didn’t understand the economic ripple effect that would occur when, lacking fertilizers and pesticides, per-acre yields plummeted and the layoffs began. The ripples that would run through other south Florida businesses, sinking them when they had no customers. Then it would spread out in ever-widening waves, because the businesses that would fail in south Florida would no longer be buying supplies from businesses elsewhere. Randall Youngblood could see that as clearly as he could see his hand before his face. And because S.R. 52 covered all of agriculture, the disaster that would stem from south Florida was only a small part of the overall picture.

Then there was the truly major issue of America’s position as a beacon of hope in an ever-hungrier world.

It wasn’t too much of a stretch to say that the Soviet Union had been brought down by the Randall Youngbloods of the United States. People who lived in perpetual near-famine looked with envy upon the opulence of American life, and nowhere was that opulence more apparent than in the ordinary supermarket. Fresh vegetables, meats, breads, all manner of foods, readily available, at affordable prices, on any given day.

And that was, in large part, a function of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Lawrence might not see it, but the birthday cake he would have at his daughter’s party was a byproduct of the very industries his legislation was trying to undermine. And Randall, for one, did not want to pay ten dollars a pound for sugar, or five dollars a pound for tomatoes. That was the alternative S.R. 52 would make inevitable.

The simple fact was that Americans liked to live above their means, and the agriculture industry helped to make that possible by producing a comparative abundance of food. Yes, the cost of that was being passed on to future generations, in the form of environmental changes that would have to be dealt with. Grant Lawrence and others seemed to view that as a moral issue, but it wasn’t. It was a political issue, a choice made by the citizens of a democratic society. And they made that choice every time they went to the supermarket and bought ordinary produce rather than the more expensive, “all natural” items that were never more than a niche market.

Senate Resolution 52 had to fail. Not to make Randall Youngblood rich—he was already rich—but to keep America fed, fit and strong.

He was ruminating on that thought when Bill Michaels knocked at his door.

“So where do we stand?” Randall asked.

Michaels had that look in his eyes again, the look of a lion on the fringe of a herd of gazelles. “I think we have an angle to play.”

Randall nodded for him to continue.

“The media’s going to spin Lawrence as the victim of yet another personal tragedy. They’ll bring up his wife’s death. Hero conquers adversity and all that.”

“Right,” Randall said.

“Well, there’s a rumor that the public didn’t get the whole story when Lawrence’s wife died. They don’t have anything specific. Just that certain lines of inquiry were deflected, very obliquely, very discreetly.”

“Could be something,” Randall said. “And it could be nothing. And it could be something that’ll make him even more the hero.”

“That’s true. And obviously we don’t want to open that can of worms before we know what the worms look like. But I’ve got a man looking into it.”

“Anything else?” Randall knew something that vague wasn’t enough to get Michaels’ blood pumping.

Michaels, ever the performer, let the moment hang for just a beat longer. “Yes. My source also says there’s something fishy about the nanny’s death.”

“Fishy how?”

“He doesn’t know yet,” Michaels said. “But the lead detective—a woman named Karen Sweeney—doesn’t like the smell of it.”

“Stay on it,” Randall said. “And stay invisible.”

Michaels smiled. Randall hoped he himself would never be the object of that particular smile.

“I’ll handle it, sir.”

Grant Lawrence called the homicide squad himself in the late afternoon. It felt strange to do it, rather than have someone else handle it for him, the way so many things in his life were handled for him, by people who seemed to be in a conspiracy to protect him from the ordinary details of his life.

He had secretaries, both in Washington and in his public offices here. He had Jerry Connally, his right hand. All of them seemed to want to handle everything for him, sometimes even including his political duties. Occasionally he felt hemmed in. Mostly he was grateful to be able to keep his focus.

But today he made the call himself. A supplicant, which wasn’t a familiar position for him anymore. But he sure as hell didn’t want to bring Jerry into contact with the police more than necessary, and he knew if he called his secretary at the local office, she would have a ton of messages from the press, constituents and colleagues. He wasn’t ready to deal with any of that.