The Gun Runner's Daughter (30 page)

From Los Angeles he traveled to Mendocino in the back of a van, feeling fine. That night, he slept in Bill Cusimano’s Mendocino house, back to the rocky coast and front protected by armed
guards not, Nicky suspected, hired specifically for the purpose of protecting him. A suspicion confirmed later that night when Bill took him through a trapdoor under the kitchen sink and showed
him, surreally lit under grow lights and bathed in a soft fall of artificial rain, a massive sea of green: shiny fat marijuana plants, glistening with resins and almost ready to harvest.

Here, he knew, was the source of the funds that had kept Mimi Luria on the run for so many years, then paid her legal expenses at Stockard, Dyson in Boston. And here, he realized, was a nearly
perfect place for Bill’s small organization to find out if anyone was following Nicky: on these narrow, winding Mendocino roads, where nearly every house harbored a plant or two of
exquisitely hybridized dope, no stranger passed unnoticed. Lying that night on a futon on the floor of Bill’s young son’s room, a cold northern sea rain pattering the window, Nicky
hoped that tonight was not the night that the little operation was going to be raided.

From Mendocino to Denver, Nicky had driven in two days, high in the cab of a moving van, in the back of which five pounds of Cusimano’s bud was hidden in the household items of a San
Francisco stockbroker, relocating to Denver. The van drove slowly, followed by two cars: business as usual for Cusimano’s well-oiled smoke operation. The driver, a lanky man of perhaps fifty,
was unaware that he was carrying upward of two hundred thousand dollars worth of dope. He thought Nicky was a friend of the customer, needing a ride east. In any case, he was glad for the
company.

In Denver Nicky climbed down from the van and experienced the first pain in his belly. He checked into a Day’s Inn and waited for Jay to call. Here, examining himself in the mirror, he
attributed his pallor to tiredness. No sooner, however, had he fallen asleep than Jay called and announced that he was virtually certain that Nicky’s departure from Los Angeles had gone
unremarked, but that in his opinion Nicky should travel overland to New York.

Nicky wasn’t interested in traveling overland; he was far too tired. When he hung up, he caught a cab to the airport and bought a ticket to Newark in the name of Don Hymans on a credit
card supplied, along with a number of other pieces of ID, by Cusimano. Twelve hours later—after an evening sitting in the airport and a night in the plastic sanctity of an airplane, Nicky
arrived at the Sherry-Netherland, exhausted, nauseous, the scars along his stomach throbbing. And no sooner was he alone in his room than he threw up.

Now, feeling somewhat better, he watched Allison climbing the court steps in a charcoal-black dress suit on TV. Briefly, he considered where he was going to confront her. He
knew she would be leaving the court at five, but he also knew where she lived, and that she collected her mail at a bar downstairs from her apartment: Gillian Morreale had gotten a New York process
server in place, and he had in turn done the research.

Outside, golden sunlight filled the well of the street, a crisp chill in the air that he could feel through the windowpanes, a chill that brought back in full force an awareness of where he was:
on the East Coast in autumn. He slept for a time, waking with an image of Allison in his mind. She had been, in his dream, soundlessly cresting a small hill of grass and then, with a friendly wave,
descending the other side, out of sight. Knowing that it was an image of anxiety did not diminish its influence. As he sat up, dizziness crossed his mind, and he had to lie down again. Finally, he
managed to stand and light a cigarette.

Smoking, he sat at the room’s little desk and unpacked from his briefcase the things he needed to prepare for that meeting. There were the relevant parts of his interview with Dov Peleg,
which would show Allison that he knew what he was looking for. There was the legal documentation that, on his word, would be filed in Massachusetts court. This would show Allison that he knew how
to get what he was looking for. And finally, there were the pictures he had taken at Ocean View farmhouse, in what seemed like another lifetime.

Still, as Nicky moved himself heavily toward the shower—he seemed to be sweating an unusual amount—he wondered why he had the feeling that what was in front of him, as represented by
these documentary tools of blackmail, was not really what he had come for.

2.

Earlier that day, while Nicky’s taxi had been pulling up to his hotel, Allison Rosenthal had been sitting at her desk before the window of her apartment.

In front of her eyes was Jane Street, three stories down, deserted but for a lone man in a black knit cap walking a dog. Both dog and master’s mouths let puffs of steam out into the
morning air, air that later would be warmed by the strong sun to the heat of another Indian summer day but which, this early morning, held far more anticipation of winter than reminiscence of
warmth.

Beyond apprehending the winter in the tableau, Allison, at her desk by the window, saw nothing of this.

In her eyes was an image of the last days of summer on the island, the days shown in the set of photographs tacked to the wall above her desk: a wide stretch of yellow sand
beach next to the luminous green sea, empty Atlantic coastline under the deep blue sky of summer, a lone gull hovering, about to dive, above a lazily curling wave.

She looked at this last image, on the wall above her desk, for a long time. She looked at it as if in it hung the key to a decision she was weighing, and in this respect, the image was telling.
It was as if the picture captured not just Ocean View farmhouse, but also the most abstract of everything that was at stake in the decision before her. A place is never just a place, she thought,
but the sum of what had been experienced there. In this place was everything that had ever mattered in her lifetime. To look at a picture of Ocean View farmhouse was to feel a direct sense of her
entire identity. Nothing, she thought, is ever only itself. But was the abstraction hidden behind this picture worth what she was about to do? Was even the truth worth what she was about to do?

A half hour passed with the even rise and fall of her breath, the radiator emitting gasps of steam that ended in an abrupt metallic clank. It lasted until 6:27 exactly. Then Allison rose,
fetched a cup of coffee from the kitchen, and walked into the bedroom to wake Dee.

While Dee showered, she returned to her desk. The calmness of meditation had flown. Her heart rate, she felt, was increasing. That was not surprising.

Dee emerged from the shower, dressed in the bedroom, and came out again, his shoe heels sudden on the floor. She rose now, examining him, his hair moussed away from his face, his cheeks
close-shaved, and his eyes showing their peculiarly aqueous blue. It struck her, suddenly, as a cold color.

She straightened his tie, the heels of her bare feet lifting from the wooden floor, and then stepped two steps back, toes first. But instead of taking his briefcase and heading for the door, Dee
sank onto the living room couch, Alley returned to sit sideways in her desk chair, facing him.

Alley wondered if his heart, too, was pounding. But then, she thought, he had no idea what was about to happen to him.

And that, although Dee perhaps could not see it on her face, was on her mind as she regarded him, expressionless, from her perch at her desk.

And yet Dee, too, was experiencing fear: perhaps most justifiably of the three scared people. His was, after all, the largest stage on which to play—for the moment, in
any case. And he was arguably the least prepared for this exposure of the three. Nicky and Alley, fighting for their lives, were only too sure of what they were doing. He, on the other hand, was
about to commit himself publicly, irrevocably, and, incidentally, illegally. That he felt badly frightened was no surprise.

It was funny, she thought—not for the first time—the degree to which Dee had become another person. He had started so sure of himself, so confident in his position as Ed
Dennis’s brilliant son, being happily groomed to assume his position in the Beltway hierarchy. Now, after peering at the world through her eyes, nothing any longer felt sure to him.

Watching him, she remembered how he had come back from a weekend at home, not two weeks ago, and told her about a conversation with his father. He had not told his father about Nicky Dymitryck,
nor about his researches into the
NAR
’s dual interests in Rosenthal and Eastbrook. He had, however, told his father that he thought Eastbrook had information relevant to the Rosenthal
prosecution, and he was considering requesting permission to depose him.

The iciness of his father’s smile, to hear Dee tell it, betrayed his concern more than did his voice.

“Dee. You don’t want to be looking to Eastbrook.”

“Why? Defense is going to.”

“No, sir. Defense will not say a word about Eastbrook.”

That gave Dee pause. Then, he said: “Dad. Eastbrook and Rosenthal have been involved in the same business since Laos. There’s not a serious piece of arms trade analysis that
doesn’t mention the one within three pages of the other.”

“The same’s true about a good half dozen other players.”

“We’ve deposed them already.”

Against his will he felt a glare of adolescence seeping into the water of his eye, as if he were not a thirty-year-old man but a child again who’d just been caught with a quarter-z of pot.
And after watching him awhile, his father spoke, quietly.

“Deedee, it takes security clearances you’ve never heard of to depose Eastbrook. Discovery of classified materials alone would hold up your trial for a minimum of five years, and
you’d still get nothing. And you don’t need it. You can convict Rosenthal on what you have.”

“That’s my point. I can convict, but it’s with half the truth.”

Now his father stood and, standing, showed his back to his son. “White House counsel feels that this is a misdirection.”

“Is he willing to put it in writing?” Dee spoke before he could stop himself.

And indeed, now it was White House counsel who turned to his son.

“You have no authority to pursue any further investigation. You have had a privileged conversation with White House staff. Now go and make your case.”

Of course, Dee had said to Alley when he told her about this conversation, Walsh had had to make hard decisions too about which cases could be made in court, and which had to be overlooked.
There were no statutory arms violations charges brought in the Walsh prosecutions, even though arms export violations were discussed before Congress and broadcast throughout the world. Walsh
didn’t even try, going for lesser charges of lying to Congress and even extraneous charges—North’s security fence, for example—instead, where the case could be made.

But this, Dee felt, was different. This, Dee felt, as he considered the case before him, was something different indeed. Dymitryck’s investigation of Rosenthal, and his death, showed that
there were forces swirling behind this trial that were being deliberately kept unacknowledged. And as for the people who were trying to keep them that way, Dee was no longer sure they knew what
they were doing.

It was, Allison thought, watching him sitting in her living room, on the morning of the biggest day of his life, a bit heartrending.

She was to blame for the dissolution of all Dee’s certainty. As if she had infected her lover with a disease that had long plagued her, as couples used willingly to share incurable cases
of syphilis.

Dee remained silent, his face showing excitement, stage fright, as it should, but also a sense of dread, which it should not. She rose now, walked into the kitchen for another
cup of coffee, and drank it, half sitting against the kitchen table, watching her lover in the living room through the small arch of the kitchen door. Then, her arms crossed, she spoke
matter-of-factly, as if continuing, uninterrupted, the conversation of the night before.

“I think you are making way too much of this.”

He didn’t reply, and she went on.

“What my grandfather would have called a ‘matzoh pudding.’ ”

Now he spoke, without looking at her.

“Your grandfather ever try a defendant whose guilt he doubted in a case he thought was politically motivated for employers he thought were concealing relevant evidence?”

Nodding, she answered in a neutral tone.

“Why don’t you go do your job and see how it pans out.”

“You mean, go do what I’m told.”

“The people who prepared this case weren’t idiots.”

“That’s not the point, Alley.”

“You’re overreacting,” she observed after a short silence, although she knew he wasn’t.

He replied without emotion. “You know I’m not. Alley, everything I know about what’s really at stake here, I either found out for myself or learned from you.”

She waited now. The moment of commitment was coming. With a distant pang of regret, she wished she could put it off.

She tried again. “No one has shown any proof my father was following orders. They have a State’s witness, Dee. They have a crime. He has no standing in this government; the defense
has only his word that he was directed by a government source.”

“So what? We both know that’s just a cover-up. Dymitryck was killed precisely because he was looking underneath that.”

“May have been. May have been. We don’t know who killed him. That’s not evidence. And besides, Dymitryck is—was—partisan.”

“Partisan is exactly what this thing isn’t, Alley. I’m about to be sacrificed to a cover-up, and you know it. It’s just like Iran-contra—not even the Democrats on
the committee wanted to see Reagan impeached. Now they don’t want to stir up anything about the Iraqi tilt. They’ll let me lose the fucking case before they do that.”

That was supposed to be unanswerable, and indeed, Allison paused. Now the decision was directly before her, more baldly stated than ever before. When at length she spoke, it was quietly and with
courage. “Then win the case. That’ll surprise them.”