On the Fifth Day (7 page)

tending a strong, tanned hand, "I'm glad you could drop by. Please, have a seat."

Thomas shuffled to the proffered chair and sat cautiously.

"We were sorry to hear of your loss," he said. "Father Knight was a good friend of the senator's and an important ally."

"Really?" said Thomas.

"Oh yes," said Hayes, choosing to treat the question as sin

cere rather than snide, which was, for once, the way Thomas had meant it. He knew nothing of his brother's recent activi

ties, and though the Ed he had known had been more than a Democrat, that Ed had disappeared off Thomas's radar long before he had actually died.

"We weren't that close," said Thomas, opting to get that into the open right away, "but I know he was a man of principle."

"Absolutely."

"Well that's kind of why I wanted to speak to you," said Thomas. The office with its clean lines and gleaming window, this athletic and successful young conservative, and the sub

ject of their conversation all made him uncomfortable and anxious to be gone.

"I don't seem to be able to find out much about what my brother was doing when he died, and it seems like I'm running into some kind of national security investigation. I don't imagine you or the senator can tell me much or do much to . . . er . . . call them off, but I was wondering . . . since the senator knew him . . ."

He gave up. He should have rehearsed this speech before

hand.
Call them off?
He sounded as if he were asking for some kind of favor. Worse, he sounded guilty.

"National security?" said Hayes, giving him a hard look. Thomas deflated further. He had hoped someone here would be able to tell him something right away. They obvi

ously knew no more than he did.

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He told Hayes about the trouble he had had getting infor

mation about his brother's death and about his interview with the DHS. Hayes's confusion seemed to deepen, but he said nothing, letting Thomas pick his uneasy way through his story. When he got to the part about the intruder who had brandished a sword, Hayes shifted and the muscles around his eyes tight

ened. He nodded slowly when Thomas stopped talking, took a pen from his jacket pocket, and began scribbling on a blotter, muttering occasional questions without looking up.

"They came when?"

"Do you know who you spoke to in Manila?"

"Some kind of road accident?"

Each time Thomas bobbed his head and answered, feeling as he had as a child, kneeling in the curtained confessional.

"Okay," said Hayes, after a moment's pause in which he seemed to decide the matter was exhausted, "leave your con

tact information with the secretary and we'll see what we can come up with. Obviously if it is a matter of national security there won't be much we can do, but . . ."

He stopped, staring over Thomas's head to the door.

"It isn't," said a man's voice from behind him. Thomas turned to see Senator Devlin himself standing in the open doorway. He was a big man, still powerful in spite of his sixtysome years. His hair was thick and white, his eyebrows bushy, his eyes blue and a little wild.

Hayes got to his feet, clearly surprised.

"Senator," he said, "this is . . ."

"Thomas Knight," said the senator. "Yes, I know. The girl outside has a tongue in her head."

He walked in with long rolling strides as if he'd just gotten off a horse, moving through the room as if he were pushing aside waist-high underbrush: a man used to taking a direct route to wherever he wanted to go.

"Ed Knight was no terrorist," he snorted over his shoulder as he heaved his briefcase onto Hayes's desk with a thud.

"Somebody screwed up."

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A. J. Hartley

"Don't you think we should turn this over to Homeland Security or the CIA . . . ?" Hayes began, suddenly sounding a little plaintive and overawed by the unexpected appearance of his boss.

"No, I damned well don't," said the senator, with a steely glare at his chief of staff. "I knew Ed Knight, and his death is a great loss to this community. That those Washington numb

skulls would desecrate his memory by turning him into some kind of leftist paramilitary because he happened to die in the wrong place is worse than insulting. It's incompetent and stu

pid and . . ." he sought for a suitable term, "blasphemous."

Hayes opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. His eyes darted to Thomas, who was getting slowly to his feet feeling as if he'd strayed into a family quarrel.

"Don't argue, Hayes," he said, raising a hand with absolute authority. He filled the room like a general astride the turret of his tank.

"Mr. Knight," said the senator, turning those bright, intense eyes on Thomas, "you have my word as an American that we'll clear your brother's name and get these idiots back to doing their job properly."

Thomas found himself smiling, inexplicably, swelling a lit

tle with something like pride, knowing even as he did so that the feeling was absurd and unreliable. But he thanked the sen

ator anyway, unable to stop himself from feeling privileged to be in his presence, awed by the scale of the man even as he knew they agreed on almost nothing.

"Sit," he said. "We'll have a drink. Senate's not in session, right? Must be, or I'd be back in D.C. resisting the impulse to take a swing at the esteemed senator from Massachusetts."

He grinned wolfishly.

"You can fill me in on your story," he said.

Thomas did so. The senator, like Hayes, said nothing, but watched him carefully, snorting and scowling at the right mo

ments, giving his secretary the nod as Thomas drew to a close. Hayes ducked out of the room.

"A good man," he nodded to Hayes's back as the door shut 45

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

behind him. "Conservative with a small
c,
perhaps, and what I call a trust-fund Republican with a tendency to be a little holier-than-thou, but I'll make a fighter of him yet."

"Whereas you are conservative with a capital
C
?" said Thomas, mustering a little of his familiar archness.

"There isn't a letter big enough," said the senator, and the grin broadened till it split his colossal face and showed his bright, even teeth. "You're not, I take it?"

"No," said Thomas.

"Well, that's too bad. But I respect your right to believe whatever dumbass liberal crap you like. Hell, I'll fight to the death anyone who says otherwise. That's a hell of a story you have there, Mr. Knight. This guy who thumped you: you think he was searching for something?"

"I do," said Thomas, "but I've no idea what."

The senator frowned so that his forehead tightened by two inches, and nodded.

"Hayes! HAYES!" he roared suddenly. "Where did you go, Kentucky?"

Hayes reappeared at the door with a tray carrying three tumblers of Waterford crystal, two rocks and two fingers of Makers Mark in each.

"Bourbon okay?" said the senator, thrusting the glass into Thomas's hand.

"Sure," said Thomas, wondering what would happen if he said no.

"To your brother," he said, raising his glass a fraction. "A good man and a good priest. And that's coming from a hellfire Southern Baptist: spiritually speaking, of course."

He knocked the whisky back in one and banged the glass down on the mirror-polished mahogany desk. Hayes raised his glass for the toast, such as it was, but he didn't actually drink.

"So did Rod here give you anything useful to go on, or did he fob you off with a bunch of bureaucratic doublespeak?"

Thomas smiled a little and his eyes met those of Hayes, who returned the smile with what looked like familiar patience. 46

A. J. Hartley

"Oh, he was very helpful, thanks," said Thomas, "and told me to leave my contact information in case . . ."

"Bureaucratic crap," snapped Devlin, glowering at his chief of staff, who was nursing his untouched drink with his feet together like a maitre d' poised to sweep away their empty soup bowls. "I don't know what the hell is going on over there--in Manila, I mean, though I guess I mean in Washing

ton too--but I'll find out and you'll hear from me. In the meantime, do nothing that would arouse anyone's suspicion. Leave the detective work to the authorities. And to me."

"Thank you, Senator," said Thomas, tasting his drink. "Do you mind my asking how the two of you met up in the first place? My brother and you, I mean."

Devlin seemed to hesitate for a moment as if trying to re

member, but Thomas thought Hayes shot him a quick look, and he wondered if something passed between them. A warn

ing? A caution? Something. Whatever it was, it reminded him that for all the senator's bluff camaraderie, the man was a ca

reer politician. Such men didn't get where they were by al

ways speaking their mind, even if he had mastered the illusion of doing exactly that.

"He approached me about a year ago," he said, his head cocked thoughtfully on one side. "He had ideas for a kind of faith-based organization: interdenominational, you under

stand. Local community leaders working together to address the causes of social problems in the city at the grassroots level. I liked the idea. I liked him, the way he thought. Smart, you know, but not too smart: concrete, not abstract. I can't be doing with a bunch of theory and high-concept nonsense that never puts bread on anyone's table . . ."

"Or lets them work for that bread themselves," said Thomas, arch again.

Devlin nodded emphatically, shrugging off the irony.

"God helps those who help themselves," he said.

"And you stayed in touch?" said Thomas, avoiding the ar

gument. "He saw you again after he got back from Italy."

There it was again: that momentary hesitation on Devlin's 47

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

part and the watchful tension that seemed to bind Hayes for a moment.

"Yes," said the senator. "I wanted him involved on a local school board. He had the experience. Would have been good for the job. But he was committed to parish work and the book he was writing. Couldn't spare the time. I was disappointed, of course, but I respected his position."

"And afterward? Did you speak again before he went to the Philippines?"

"Is there something you are driving at, Mr. Knight?" said the senator with that same wolfish grin. "I'm starting to feel like I'm being interrogated."

"I'm just curious," said Thomas, pulling back. "Trying to fill in the blanks. We weren't close, as I said, and . . . Well, I guess I'm just trying to find out what he was doing out there in the first place."

The senator perched on the edge of the desk and leaned forward, looming over Thomas, and giving him a cool and studying gaze.

"You're afraid that there might be something to this terror

ist talk," he said. "You are feeling guilty for losing touch with your brother and you are anxious that he really might have strayed from the path, become a traitor to his country."

Thomas said nothing, not absolutely sure what he thought of this pronouncement, but wilting a little under the senator's level stare. Devlin spoke the next words with slow precision.

"Put. It. Out. Of. Your. Mind."

Thomas nodded.

"Your brother was no terrorist. This will all blow over. Re

member Ed for what he was, not for what a few misguided bu

reaucrats think he might have been. Everyone is afraid these days: scared of their own shadows. They see terrorists and their sympathizers everywhere. Ed wasn't one of them. You know that."

Thomas nodded, wondering if he shared the senator's con

viction. They shared so little else.

CHAPTER 11

Thomas missed the city. As a younger man he had spent a lot of time there, but with home and work keeping him to the tamer environs of Evanston he came downtown rarely now. He liked Chicago's erratic, gray vastness, its bare trees and the wind rippling in over the lake. He headed down to the shore, thinking about Ed and wondering what he would do with his life when all this blew over. He was at Lincoln Park Zoo before he realized it, and since the place looked quiet and was still--amazingly--free, he went in as he had done so many times with Ed when they were boys.

It wasn't so much quiet as deserted. It was late afternoon and very cold, but he found strolling around by himself, con

sidering the animals hardy enough to venture out, strangely satisfying. He was usually conflicted about zoos, drawn to the beauty and magnificence of the animals while still feel

ing something like pity for the creatures themselves, how

ever much he told himself that such places served all manner of positive functions. Today he felt only a kind of peace and the fleeting ghosts of memory.

He saw just one family, a thin-faced man and his wife who drummed on the glass of the gorilla house to the delight of their screaming kids. Thomas nearly objected, but he didn't have the energy, and the gorillas just watched blankly, waiting for the humans to leave.

He walked through the Kovler big-cat house, watching the snow leopards stalking back and forth, and then went back outside into the cold where the lions lounged on snow-patched rocks, separated from him by a low fence and a steep, empty moat. They had always finished up here as kids, he and Ed, going from enclosure to enclosure and arguing amiably which was cooler, the lynx or the serval, in the same way that they had debated outfielders or wide receivers. The lions looked as 49

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

lions always seem to look, casually haughty and indifferent, lazily tolerating people like him who came to gape at them, secure in the knowledge that they were the lords of their turf, however limited it might be. Even enclosed like this, even in the Chicago winter with the gray towers of the city on one side and the grayer waters of Lake Michigan on the other, they brought a little piece of the savannah with them and ruled it.
You have to respect that,
thought Thomas, suddenly feeling the absence of his brother as he had not done all day. He was watching one of the lionesses snoring and scratch