The Emperor of Ocean Park (16 page)

“Nothing,” says Kimmer, so quickly that we both look at her in astonishment.

“You’re absolutely sure?” asks the great Mallory Corcoran.

“Absolutely.”

She slips off her glasses and offers her most dazzling smile, which turns most men into fawning sycophants, and invariably devastates me, on the rare occasions that she bothers to try. It is wasted. Uncle Mal has weathered smiles from the world’s leading experts. He raises an eyebrow at my wife and then turns to me. Kimmer grabs my hand and shoots me a glance. This seems unwise: does she think he will overlook it?

“Talcott?” he inquires.

“Well,” I begin. Kimmer squeezes desperately. Surely I would not mention, in front of Uncle Mal and this total stranger . . . surely . . .

“Misha,” she murmurs, casting her eyes toward Meadows, who, obviously bored, is staring into space. She has written perhaps two sentences on her pad.

But my wife has no need to worry, for her infidelities are not on my mind. “Well, there is one thing bothering me,” I admit. Then I tell them about this morning’s visit from the FBI. As I lay out the details, I can feel Kimmer growing distant and annoyed . . . and worried. She returns my hand.

Uncle Mal interrupts.

“Did they really say that if you didn’t talk to them about Jack Ziegler it could hurt your wife’s chances?”

“Yes.”

“Those bastards,” he says, but softly, leaning back and shaking his head. Then he picks up one of the four telephones scattered around the room and stabs a button with a sausagey finger. “Grace, get me the Attorney General. If he’s not available, the deputy. It’s urgent.” He hangs up. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, oh, yes.” He turns to Meadows. “Get me a copy of the regs governing FBI interviews with witnesses.”

“You mean now?” she asks, startled out of some private reverie.

“No, next week. Of course now. Go.”

She scurries from the room, still clutching her notepad. I see at once—and I assume Meadows does too—that Uncle Mal does not want her to be around for what is coming next. What I do not see is why. Nor is Mallory Corcoran about to enlighten us. Instead, he takes us on a side trip: “Oh, Tal, by the way, I turned on the television the other night, and who do you think I saw? Your brother.” And he is off, describing Addison’s appearance on
The News Hour,
during which he railed against some recent Republican legislative initiative. Kimmer cringes, worrying now that my brother’s politics will hurt her chances, and Uncle Mal, noticing her discomfort, veers off into a story about my father’s days on the bench, a very funny one about a befuddled litigant, to which I hardly pay any attention, not only because I have heard it many times before, but because I am remembering the business card the FBI agents never gave me. I suddenly know why Uncle Mal sent Meadows away. He has figured out that whatever the Justice Department is about to tell him is going to be awful, and nothing to do with Kimmer and her judicial ambitions. After Mariah’s dispiriting speculations, it scares me in advance.

The phone buzzes. Uncle Mal stops in mid-sentence and picks it up. “Yes? Who? Okay.” He puts his hand over the receiver. “It’s the AG’s deputy.” Then he is lost to us again: “Mort, how the hell are you? . . . I hear that Frank is going to Harvard next year. That’s great . . . . When are you going to start making an honest living? . . . Well, you know there’s always a place for you here . . . . What? Los
Angeles?
Oh, come on, our smog is much better than theirs . . . . Uh-huh . . . Oh, I know, I know . . . . Well, listen, let me tell you why I called. I am sitting here in my office with a couple of very irate citizens of this fine republic, one of whom rejoices in the name of Talcott Garland, and the other of whom is known as Kimberly Madison . . . . Yes, that Kimberly Madison . . . No, I know you have nothing to do with picking judges, but that’s not what I’m calling about . . . . Uh-huh.” He puts his hand over the receiver and says to us: “Aren’t there any secrets in this town?” Back to the phone: “Well, listen. It seems that a couple of not very polite FBI guys visited Mr. Garland this morning . . . . No, nothing about that. A criminal investigation. The subject appears to be a certain Jack Ziegler, whose name I assume you have heard . . . . What? . . . No, no, I’m not representing Mr. Ziegler any longer, you know Brendan Sullivan over at Williams & Connolly does that these days . . . . No, Morton, no, not
that either . . . No, my guy is Talcott Garland . . . . Uh-huh . . . Morton, listen. Here’s the thing. In the first place, as I suspect you know, my client just buried his father yesterday. So I’d say the timing is a little bit lousy. Second, one of these FBI guys threatened Mr. Garland.” I am shaking my head emphatically, but Uncle Mal, once he gets going, is relentless. “Yes, that’s right . . . . No, not with bodily harm. He said that if Mr. Garland did not tell him exactly what he wanted to know, right then and there, it would hurt Ms. Madison’s chances for the nomination . . . . Yes, I know they’re not supposed to, that’s why I’m calling . . . . Yes . . . No, I haven’t . . . . Yes, I do, and an apology from your boss would be even better . . . . Yes . . . Yes, I will . . . . Exactly one hour, though . . . Okay.”

He hangs up without saying goodbye, which has become a status symbol in our uncivil times: the less you have to worry about offending people, the more powerful you must be.

“Uncle Mal,” I begin, but he rides right over me.

“Right. So this is the thing. These FBI guys seem to have broken lots of rules. So Morton Pearlman is going to talk to his boss, and then we’ll see.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” says Kimmer, nervously.

“Kimberly Kimberly, dear, don’t worry.” He actually pats her hand. “This will not snap back on you, I promise. This is just how the game is played in this town. Take the word of an old hand. You have to let them know they can’t fu—, uh, can’t mess with you, and you have to let them know early. So, this is what I suggest.” He is on his feet now, so we are, too. Outside, it is silvery twilight. “Why don’t you two lovebirds get a bite to eat? Call me right here in, say, an hour. I’ll tell Grace to put you through. I’ll have an answer by then, or I’ll be down at DOJ eating somebody’s lunch.”

During this splendid little speech, he has somehow moved us to the door. I notice Meadows approaching down the hall, a colorful volume of the
Code of Federal Regulations
in her hand.

“Thank you, Mr. Corcoran,” says Kimmer.

“‘Mal’ is fine,” he says, for about the tenth time.

“Thank you, Uncle Mal,” I add.

This time I get the hug. And a furtive whisper in my ear: “This smells, Tal. It stinks to high Heaven.” I turn in surprise, thinking, for some reason, that he is talking about me, not to me. But I see in his wise, experienced insider’s eyes only warning. “Be very, very careful,” he says. “Something isn’t right.”

(II)

M
Y SISTER
and the terrifying au pair are watching Bentley. Mariah said he can stay with her as late as we need to be out, so worried Kimmer and I, lovebirds or not, walk up to K Street to one of the city’s many steak houses. Our nation’s capital is not noted for the quality of its restaurants, but its chefs do seem to know steak. It is just past five, so we are able to get a quiet corner table without waiting. Kimmer, who has been silent for most of the four blocks we have walked, throws herself into her chair, orders a brandy Alexander before the waiter can get a word out, and favors me with a disapproving glance. I reach for her hand, but she snatches it away.

“What is it?” I ask in frustration.

“Nothing,” she snaps. She looks across the room, then looks back. “I thought you were on my side. I thought you loved me. Then all this bullshit about the FBI. I mean, why the hell did you bring that up?”

Kimmer knows that vulgarity bothers me, which is why she uses it when she is angry; I do not believe she speaks this way to anybody else.

“I thought Uncle Mal could help,” I tell her. “And he is helping.”

“Helping! He picks up the phone and yells at some idiot who works for the Attorney General, and then says I told him to do it, and that’s supposed to
help?”
She slumps in her chair, yanks off her glasses, closes her eyes for a moment. I glance around nervously, but none of the other diners seem to have noticed her outburst. Kimmer perks up again. “I mean, I thought he was supposed to be some kind of major player. Doesn’t he have more sense than that?”

Now, the truth is that Uncle Mal’s reaction bothered me too. So did his decision to send Meadows out of the room. But I am not sure how to make either of these points to my wife. Goodness knows, nobody in my family ever says anything directly.

“Kimmer, don’t you think the best thing is to get this out in the open—”

“Get
what
out in the open?”

“Whatever’s going on.”

“Nothing’s
going on.
”

“How can you say that after Jack Ziegler—”

“Your damn father just won’t leave us alone, will he?”

“What are you talking about?”

She seems almost ready to cry. “Your parents never wanted you to marry me in the first place! You
told
me that.”

I am stunned. My wife has not mentioned this story in years but, obviously, has not forgotten it. Well, that your in-laws opposed your marriage cannot be easy to forget. “Oh, darling, that was years ago, and they weren’t
against
it exactly . . . .”

“They said it would be scandalous. You told me.”

And they were right. It was. But this is hardly the time to remind my wife how the two of us gleefully shocked black Washington. “Well, sure, but you have to understand the way they meant it . . . .”

“Your father’s in the grave, and he’s still making trouble.”

“Kimmer!”

She sighs, then puts up her hands in a gesture of truce. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. That wasn’t fair.” She leans forward and sips her drink, closes her eyes for an instant, then takes my hand. Despite my own growing anger, I let her do it. Being touched by her calms me; it has always calmed me, even back when the reason I was nervous around Kimmer was that she was married to somebody else. “But, Misha, look at it from my point of view. You have what you want. You wanted a marriage and a child and tenure at a good law school. Well, guess what? You have all three.” Kimmer begins to massage my fingers, one at a time, which she knows I like. “But what about me? I’m ambitious, okay? That’s my sin. Fine. You’ve known since we were in law school that I wanted to be a judge, right? Well, now I have a chance. I used to think the . . . Well, okay, what happened with your father made it impossible. And maybe that’s . . . that’s maybe one reason I haven’t been as good a wife to you as I should.”

She drops her eyes briefly, a gesture so uncharacteristically coy I am sure it is feigned. When Kimmer and I finally married, my father wasn’t even on the bench any more. Sensing that I have not bought her explanation, she tiptoes past it. “And I’m sorry about that. I really am. I want to do better for you, Misha. I really do. I’ve been trying.” Caressing my hand now, as though Jerry Nathanson, probably the most prominent lawyer in Elm Harbor, does not exist. “But, Misha, then he . . . he
dies.
And I know you’re aching and I’m sorry for that. I truly am. But, Misha, he’s all over the papers again. Your father. Everybody’s talking about him again. And I’m thinking, Okay, maybe I can still hold it together. So I go over and see the Senator, like a good little girl, and he just sits there with this . . . this supercilious grin, and I’m like, Why did I bother to come here? Because, you know, the whole thing is like fixed. Fixed so Marc wins, I mean. And then Ruthie won’t tell me squat. And Jack
Ziegler at the cemetery, and then this FBI thing. What did those guys want? I mean, it’s like this thing with your father . . . it’s going to ruin it for me after all.”

There are tears on Kimmer’s cheeks. It has been years since she has opened herself to me this way; what she has said to others I don’t want to know. Her pain is genuine, and I warm to her. Although we were law school classmates, my wife is three years younger than I—she skipped a grade somewhere along the way; I wasted twenty-four months as a graduate student in philosophy and semiotics before turning to law—and there are moments when the three years feels like thirty.

“Kimmer, darling, I had no idea,” I whisper. And this is true. There are depths to my wife I am too often afraid to plumb; and my fears have done as much as her conduct to sour the sweetest parts of our marriage. I squeeze her hands. She squeezes back. As her tears reflect the candlelight, her face grows even more exquisite. “But none of it has to be ruined. The Judge was my father, not yours. And the Judge is not you. There isn’t any . . . I mean, you don’t have any scandals. They certainly can’t hold your father-in-law against you.”

Kimmer is miserable. “They can so,” she says, all at once childlike. “They can. They will.” A sniff. “They
do.
”

“They won’t,” I insist, even though I am afraid she is right. “And you know I’m in your corner.”

“I know
you
are,” she says bleakly, as though nobody else would be so foolish.

“And Uncle Mal—”

“Oh, Misha, get real. Uncle Mal won’t be able to do anything unless this goes away. You see what I’m saying? It has to go away.”

“What does?”

“This thing with your father. Whatever it is, Misha. I don’t know. The FBI. Jack Ziegler, all of it. It has to go away, and it has to go away fast, or folks will be like, ‘No, uh-uh, not her, she’s married to you-know-whose son.’ So we can’t do anything to keep it alive, Misha. Not me, not you, not Uncle Mal, nobody. We have to let it die, or I don’t have a chance.” Her mysterious, tormented brown eyes burrow into mine. “Do you understand, Misha? It has to die.”

“I understand.” Her fervor, as always, overwhelms my caution. Kimmer has long had a talent for coaxing promises out of me before I know what I am saying.

“You
have to let it die.”

“I hear what you’re saying.”