The Cost of Commitment - KJ2 (22 page)

“Commissioner Sampson, I know you’re feeling overwhelmed and emotional at the moment. I—”

“No, Kate. I have to step down.”

“I don’t think—”

The Cost of Commitment

“No.” He sat up straighter. “No, I need to make her my priority now.

It’s the right thing to do.”

“Sir, has it occurred to you that whoever planted this story is looking for that very reaction? That somebody wants you out?”

He seemed to consider that for a moment. “Perhaps, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m done. Finished.” As if to emphasize the point, he added, “No more.”

“Sir,” Kate felt her way carefully, “whether you stay or go, a story this sexy won’t die. The media will keep after it. Why not stay and fight?”

“Kate, you are brave and courageous. Far more so than I am. I don’t have the wherewithal to stand up and have spears thrown at me day after day.”

“Respectfully, sir, you do that now.”

“Yes, but it’s not personal. Never personal,” he murmured. He slapped his palms on his knees. “I’d better call the governor. Then I’ve got to get home to my wife. Prepare a statement for me, Kate, will you?”

“What do you want it to say, sir?”

“That I’m resigning for personal reasons, that I don’t want my personal life to be a distraction for this governor and this administration.

The extraordinary work that all the fine men and women who work for DOCS do on a daily basis is more important and more worthy of headlines than a mistake their commissioner made a dozen years ago.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, sir? We can take the trip home to think about it.”

“No, Kate, but thank you for trying. I’ve got to do this.” He looked at her wistfully, “I’ve been very lucky to have you on board these past few months. I’ll miss you.”

“And I you, sir. I wish you’d reconsider.”

Sampson sighed. “I know, but I must do what’s right for my wife and me. She’s all I’ve got.” Tears began to roll down his cheeks once again.

“I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“It may be all right, sir.” Kate put her hand on his arm sympathetically.

“Yeah,” he sniffed and wiped his eyes on his sleeve, struggling to regain his composure. “Well, I’d better get making some phone calls.”

As he started to rise, he added, “Oh, and Kate? I’m going to recommend that Bill Redfield take my place. Don’t make that public just yet, though.

I want to make sure the governor is on board first.”

“Yes, sir.” For some reason Kate could not explain, the hair on the back of her neck was standing on end.

Lynn Ames

“Wow. That’s a shocker, huh?”

Kate and Jay were in the kitchen eating a light supper.

“I’ll say. I really liked the man. He had integrity and a vision. But Jay, he just rolled over without so much as a whimper. Just threw his hands up and walked away.”

“Yeah. That seems sort of out of character, doesn’t it?”

“Mm-hmm. Since he resigned and it doesn’t matter what I know anymore, I did a little digging before I left the office for the night. I mean, I felt like I knew the man, and then it was as if I didn’t know him at all.”

“What’d you find out?”

“He got married right out of college to his sweetheart, then got his M.A. in criminal justice from John Jay College. He and his wife wanted desperately to have children, but for some reason they were never able to.

They both got tested, and the problem was never clear. I guess the issue caused some tension in the marriage, but they had worked through that before he was drafted and sent over to Vietnam as part of an intelligence gathering unit.”

“Didn’t he get a Purple Heart?”

“Yeah. That was apparently around the same time he met the—how shall I say this delicately—mother of his child.”

“Hmm.” Jay shook her head. “So he and his wife spend years trying to have a kid, then he goes over there and in no time flat he gets a Vietnamese woman pregnant. I can see where that wouldn’t go over too well at home.”

“To put it mildly.” Kate popped a piece of pineapple from a shish kebab in her mouth. “I’m pretty sure he never had any intention of continuing a relationship with this woman, even though he knew she was pregnant before he left to return to the States. So I guess rather than do the honorable thing and tell his wife—”

“The honorable thing, sweetheart, would have been if he’d never cheated on his wife in the first place.”

“No argument here, love. But, having already done that, the next course of action might have been to ’fess up to his mistake.”

“Right.”

“Apparently, he couldn’t face telling his wife what he’d done, knowing that they’d been trying to have a child themselves for so long.

Ostensibly he thought she’d feel worse knowing that the problem with conception had to be hers.”

Jay snorted.

“Or at least that’s the rationalization for his silence.”

“That’s more like it.” Jay started to rise to clear the empty dishes, but Kate put a hand on her arm.

The Cost of Commitment

“You cooked, sweetheart. I’ve got the dishes.” She took the plates to the sink. “In any event, Sampson started feeling guilty after he’d come back stateside about leaving that woman over there with a child to raise on her own.”

“Well, bully for him.”

“Yeah,” Kate breathed, shaking her head. “None of this sounds like the man I know. Anyway, he managed, through his intelligence contacts in country, to find her. He started sending her money as a means to assuage his guilt.”

“Harmph.”

“And,” Kate continued, “because the idea of having a daughter appealed to him. I think he thought that somehow he could stay in her life.”

“Without his wife being any the wiser, right?”

“Right.”

“Jackass.”

“Well, Scoop, it doesn’t sound to me like he thought any of this through very logically. So that last part doesn’t surprise me.”

“What now? Did you talk to him after you got back tonight?”

“Yeah. As you can imagine, it’s a mess. She’s distraught and spitting bullets. He’s beside himself and has no idea how to make it right.

They’re taking off tonight to get away from the media and to take some time to sort through all of this.”

“And you’re left holding the bag,” Jay said bitterly.

Kate dried her hands on a towel and circled behind Jay, putting her arms around her and kissing her on the cheek.

“It’s not that bad, sweetheart. Since he doesn’t work for DOCS

anymore, I can simply tell the media that they’ll have to talk to him if they want answers. It’s not within my purview any more.”

“What did the governor say?”

“He and Sampson are good friends. I think he was in shock, for starters. He trusts Sampson, so he had no problem following his recommendation for a successor. Redfield was named the new commissioner immediately.”

“That’s not good for you, right?”

“I don’t know, honey. There’s something about him that doesn’t sit right with me. And then there’s the way he blew me off when I wanted to fire Marisa.” Kate shrugged.

Jay put her hand on top of Kate’s where it rested on her shoulder.

“Are you going to be all right in all this?”

“I’d like to think so. I talked to the governor myself. He told me in his discussion with Redfield he made it clear that he wanted me to stay.”

“Well, that’s good, anyway.”

Lynn Ames

“Yeah, but something’s bothering me about all this.”

“Yeah? Like all of it.”

“No, Jay. I mean something’s bothering me about the way this all came about.” She sat down at the table again. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that this story should come out right now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s look at this.” Kate started ticking things off on her fingers. “A series of bullshit stories and editorials blasting me come out. Then we find out that Breathwaite is the source and is using Marisa as a mole—or worse. Redfield refuses to let me do anything about it. Next, it escalates and we get direct proof that Breathwaite isn’t just feeding stories to the press anymore but is blackmailing reporters into trashing me. When that doesn’t work, he tries the head-on approach, threatening to expose you.

We thwart that by coming out ahead of him. And now this.” She looked over at Jay.

“You think this is tied in with us.”

“It seems awfully coincidental, doesn’t it?”

Jay thought for a moment. “Okay, I can agree with that. But what’s the angle? Breathwaite wants to come back, but he’s certainly not coming back as commissioner. So what’s in it for him?”

“Maybe he thinks Redfield will fire me and bring him back.”

“He can’t do that,” Jay huffed indignantly, “he’s got no grounds.”

“He doesn’t need any, sweetheart. I serve ‘at the pleasure.’ That means he doesn’t need a reason to fire me, he just can. Maybe he says he wants his own spokesman in there—somebody he’s hired.”

“Well, the governor took care of that by telling him he wanted you to stay, right?”

Kate pondered. “So it would appear. The governor has the ultimate authority. I can’t imagine Redfield would defy him. After all, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

“What next?”

“I don’t know, Jay. I wish I did. I guess we’ll just have to sit tight and see what happens. I can tell you this, though—I don’t trust Redfield. It’s possible that he’s just benefiting from the fallout here and has nothing to do with anything that’s come before.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know what to believe, but there’s something about him that just doesn’t sit right with me. That, and his reaction to the Marisa thing.”

“Mm.”

“Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I hate that part.”

Kate laughed. “Yeah, me too.”

The Cost of Commitment

ell, gentlemen, it seems that something good has finally happened.” Hawthorne turned to his good friend.

W

“Congratulations, William. Your new position suits you.”

“Thank you, Robert.”

Breathwaite couldn’t stand it. “Oh, no need to thank me,” he chimed in. “Never mind that none of that would have happened without me.”

Hawthorne smiled thinly. “And thank you, David, for managing to get this one right.”

Breathwaite’s growl was audible.

“I felt certain you wouldn’t fail to remind us of your role. I’m glad you didn’t disappoint me.”

Vendetti snickered.

“Michael,” Hawthorne intoned, “it would have been nice if you could have been more helpful here. It seems our boy Charlie is determined to keep the dyke in her current role. What happened there?”

Vendetti straightened up even more rigidly in his chair. “He and Sampson had a conversation before the resignation became public.

Apparently, Kyle’s status was among the topics of discussion. There was nothing I could do about that.”

“That makes our job a bit more difficult. What do you think, Bill?”

“Hyland made it a goddamned condition of employment that I keep her on. I couldn’t very well object—he just would have passed me over for someone else. I figured it was better to get in there first, then figure out a way to get it done.”

“Agreed,” Hawthorne nodded. “But we don’t have a long window.

What’s our boy’s social schedule with the witch these days, Michael?”

“It looks like he’s got her on his calendar for dinner next week. I’ve been chatting up his social secretary.”

Lynn Ames

“We have to stop her from getting to him. It’s too dangerous. Every single damn time he comes out of one of those dinners he throws out some idea from left field that’s bound to jeopardize his position with both moderate and conservative democrats. The friggin’ election’s going to be close enough without having to worry about him alienating important constituencies.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Vendetti said calmly.

“See that you do.” Hawthorne looked at him dangerously.

“Bill, how long before you think you can safely take care of dyke wonder?”

The new DOCS commissioner laughed unpleasantly. “Give me a few weeks.”

“A few weeks?” Breathwaite exploded.

Redfield turned to him slowly. “Yes, David,” he said patronizingly.

“If I move too quickly it will seem as though I’m defying the governor.

And if that happens and I fall out of favor, you have no chance of coming back. Perhaps if you hadn’t called so much attention to her in the first place—well, let’s just say your lack of subtlety has made the task that much more difficult.”

“If it wasn’t for me, you two-bit bureaucrat, you wouldn’t be sitting in the commissioner’s seat right now.”

Unconcerned with Breathwaite’s outburst, Redfield answered dismissively, “I would have gotten there eventually, and with a lot less scrutiny, I might add.”

“Okay, boys. Enough jawing. Bill, let’s look at a three-to-four-week horizon. That puts us,” Hawthorne consulted a calendar, “just around Thanksgiving or the beginning of December.”

Breathwaite, on the verge of objecting, thought better of it, sitting back in his chair instead and pressing his fingers together underneath his chin. He tried for calm practicality. “That puts us behind schedule.”

“A little bit,” Hawthorne admitted grudgingly, “but not fatally so. The nominating convention isn’t for another eight months. I think we’ll be all right, as long as we can keep her away from Charlie so that he doesn’t self-destruct.” He looked pointedly at Vendetti.

“I told you,” the press secretary said curtly, “I’ll take care of it.”

“Class dismissed,” Hawthorne said breezily. “See you all in a month or so.”

“Where are we going?” Jay was practically bouncing up and down in the passenger seat.

“I’m not telling,” Kate said playfully.

“Can I take this blindfold off?”

The Cost of Commitment

“Nope.”

“What if I get carsick?”

“You won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Jay, have you ever gotten carsick before?”

“When I was a little girl,” Jay whined.

Kate looked at her lover appraisingly. “You’re still little, but you’re sure no girl.”