The Motive (60 page)

“For what?”

“For the nomination.”

Glitsky’s every nerve pulsed with urgency. He knew that if he was to have a chance at life, he would have a split second to recognize his moment and seize it. But part of him settled to a stillness with this information. “You mean the cabinet post?”

“With the government, yes.”

“And they needed a background check?”

“The FBI, yes. But don’t you see, he didn’t need it, the post. He had position and power and money and love. He didn’t need it. I begged him not to let them even start.”

“Because once they started on him, they’d get to you.”

She nodded. “They would have to. I was his fiancée, soon his wife. They would have to background me, too.”

“You could have left him. Wouldn’t that have been better?”

“Of course, if it would have been possible. You think I would not have done that? But it wouldn’t have done any good. I was too close to Paul. They would still have needed to check me.”

“But the FBI already knew about you. You were in witness protection.”

“Yes? So? The people checking me and Paul were a different department.” She hacked in disgust. “They could do nothing. I asked them. They would not. They said they could contain it.”

“Did you try to tell them it was life and death?”

“Ha! Of course. The CIA in Algeria knew that, but the FBI didn’t believe it, or didn’t care. I didn’t matter. It’s
government
, don’t you understand? Where—how do you say?—the left doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and doesn’t wash the other even if they could. And the FBI doesn’t answer to the CIA.”

“So they would have found out who you were and gone public with it?”

“That’s what they do. Not on purpose, certainly. Very discreetly, of course. Need to know, high security. Like every junior congressman and tabloid journalist in Washington. And their wives. And their whores. And anyone who would trade the information for something they wanted.”

“And you believe that word would have gotten back to Algeria that you were still alive?”

“Don’t you understand? There is no way that it wouldn’t have. It was too valuable a secret to keep. Who could have a million dollars and not spend any of it?”

Suddenly her expression changed. Glitsky tensed on the couch, focused on the gun, ready to spring. But she didn’t move the gun. Canting her head to one side, she went still, eyed him inquisitively. “How do you know about that?”

“Because I know who you are, Missy. Or Monique.”

She stared at him, hung her head for a heartbeat, but not long enough to give him an opening. When she looked back up, her face had set into a mask of conviction. “Then that is your death warrant,” she said, and started to move the gun.

Glitsky put his hands up in front of his face, but didn’t make another move. “It’s too late,” he said. “I’ve told the police here. It’s already public.”

“You’re lying! If you worked with the police here, they’d be with you now.”

“Call your bank then. Ask them if I was there this morning with your police chief.”

She rested the gun on her knee. “You’ve been to the bank?”

“To your box, Missy. Three hundred thousand dollars and Paul’s ring. I told your story to the district attorney in San Francisco and got a warrant. The affidavit’s under seal, but it’s only a matter of time. Everyone will know it by tomorrow. If you kill me, they may know it by tonight.”

Outside, they heard the rain suddenly falling with a vengeance.

Monique, Michelle, Monica, Missy put a hand up to her forehead and pulled nervously at the stud over her left eye. “They will murder my family. Don’t you understand that?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “But it can’t be undone.”

The two of them sat about eight feet apart. The one light by the front window flickered with the freshening wind, the power of the deluge. The gun was on her leg, but she was no longer pointing it at him. “What is your name again?” she asked.

“Abraham.”

“My parents. I cannot let…” She choked on the rest.

“Maybe we can contact the CIA…”

“And what? What do they do in Algeria? Ask their Muslim brothers for mercy for someone who betrayed them? Don’t you see? There is no mercy so long as I am alive.”

Glitsky had come to the front of the couch and was now sitting slightly forward, in a relaxed posture, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. “Missy,” he said. “I’m going to stand up now.”

She immediately gripped the gun in both of her hands and pointed it at the center of his chest.

His eyes locked on hers. “You’ve had enough of killing to protect your secret. That’s over now. The secret is out.”

“It isn’t. You’re lying.”

His voice was calm and reasonable. “I’m not lying. You know that.”

A long pause. Then a longer pause. “You said you were tired of killing, but that you had to do it. But killing me now will accomplish nothing. So I’m giving you another minute to think it over, then I’m leaving. Shoot me or not, run or stay, it’s over. You know that.”

He gave her the promised moment to think. Then he stood.

“Don’t come any closer!”

“Now I’m going to walk around you.”

“No! Don’t you move! I’ll kill you, I swear to God I will.”

“I don’t think you will,” he said. “It wouldn’t accomplish anything.”

He was moving up to where she sat, giving her a wide berth. She stood up, too, and took a step back. Going slowly and smoothly, never stopping, he leaned over to pick up his jacket, then putting it on, he continued past her, feeling the gun trained on him at every step, until his back was to her now and there was nothing to do but reach for the doorknob and pray that he was right.

Never looking over his shoulder, he closed his hand around the metallic orb and gave a yank, then stepped out into the downpour and pulled the door closed behind him.

Half an hour later, eight Davis city police cars were parked in the streets surrounding and in the parking lot in front of the apartment building. The rain had resumed its regular steady drifting. The police switchboard had received three calls from the immediate neighborhood in the past twenty minutes reporting what sounded like a gunshot.

But no one was disposed to take unnecessary chances. The policemen had gone door-to-door in the apartment building, rousting the six students who lived there, getting
them out of harm’s way. Matt Wessin used the bullhorn and informed Missy that she was surrounded by police and had sixty seconds to throw out her weapons and give herself up.

When the minute was up and there had been no response, Abe Glitsky held up a hand to Wessin and his men and, all alone, walked across the few open feet of parking lot to the front door. He stopped for an instant, drew a breath and gathered himself before he pushed.

Slumped over to her right, the terrorist, the killer, the lover, the martyr was on the couch where he’d been sitting not so long before. Glitsky took a step into the room. His chin fell down over his chest. Always professional, still and always an exception to the rule, Missy D’Amiens had shot herself in the head.

In a moment, Glitsky would turn and nod to Wessin and the routines would begin. He tried to imagine some other way it could have gone, something he might have done differently.

But it had all been ordained and set in motion long before he’d been involved. He was lucky to have escaped with his life, when so many others had not.

That was going to have to be enough.

O
n a sunny Saturday evening a couple of weeks into April, Hardy was driving with his wife, top down on the convertible, on the way to Glitsky’s. A week before, he’d come across a CD of Perry Como’s greatest hits, and since then had been alienating everyone close to him—especially his children—with his spontaneous outbursts into renditions of “Papa Loves Mambo” and “Round and Round” and others that were, to him, classics from his earliest youth, when his parents used to watch the crooner’s show every Sunday night. Now, as his last notes from “Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)” faded to silence along with the CD track, Frannie reached over and ejected the disc.

“You really like that guy, don’t you?”

“What’s not to like?”

“I know there’s something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s just that he’s before my time.”

“Perry? He’s eternal. Besides, you don’t hear polkas often enough nowadays. If you did, the world would be a happier place. I’m thinking of trying to find an Oktoberfest record so we can have more of them on hand at the house.”

“The kids might kill you. On second thought, I might kill you.”

“No. You’d all get used to it. Pretty soon all their friends are coming over for polka parties. You’re the hostess wearing one of those cute Frau outfits. I can see it as the next big new thing.” He broke into a snatch of the song again.

“Dismas.”

He stopped. After a moment, driving along, he turned to his wife. “Okay, if polka isn’t going to be your thing, do you want to hear an interesting fact?”

“I live for them.”

“Okay, how about this? The ‘zip’ in ZIP code? It stands for ‘zone improvement plan.’ Did you know that?”

She cast him a sideways glance. “You’ve been reading that miscellany book again.”

“True. Actually, my new life goal is to memorize it.”

“Why?”

“So I’ll know more stuff.”

“You already know too much stuff.”

“Impossible. I mean, the ‘zip’ fact, for example. Zone improvement plan.” He looked over for her response.

“Wow,” she said.

“Come on, Frannie. Did you know that? Don’t you think that’s neat to know?”

“No, I do. I said ‘wow,’ even. Didn’t you hear me?”

“It sounded like a sarcastic ‘wow.’”

“Never.”

“Okay, then.” They drove on in silence for a moment.

“Zone improvement plan,” Frannie suddenly said after half a block. “Imagine that.”

Hardy looked over at her, a tolerant smile in place. “Okay, we’ll drop it. But only because there’s yet another unusual and interesting fact you may not know, and probably want to.”

“More than I want to know about what ‘zip’ stands for? I can’t believe that.”

“This dinner tonight at Abe’s? He asked me what kind of champagne to buy.”

“Abe’s drinking champagne?”

“I got the impression he intended to.”

“Wow. Not sarcastic,” she added. “When’s the last time you saw him drink anything with alcohol in it?”

“Somewhere far back in the mists of time. Certainly not in the past few years.”

“So what’s the occasion?”

“I don’t know. But it’s got to be a good one.”

Hardy found a spot to park within a block of Glitsky’s house, and figuring he’d won the lottery, pulled his convertible to the curb. Setting the brake, he brought the top back up, turned off the engine and reached for the door
handle. Frannie put a hand on his leg and said, “Do you mind if we just sit here a minute?”

He stopped and looked questioningly over at her. “Whatever you want.” He took her hand. “Is everything all right?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“If everything was all right with me?”

“Yes.”

“You mean with us?”

“Us. You. Everything.”

He stared for a moment out through the windshield. He squeezed her hand, turned toward her. “Look at us right now. Look at where we are. It’s a good place.”

“Not if you’re unhappy in it.”

“I’m not unhappy. I wouldn’t trade this, what I’ve got with you, for anything. What’s got you thinking this?”

“It just seems you’ve been…distant, especially since the trial, now that you’ve stopped seeing her every day.”

He said nothing.

“It makes me wonder if what we have isn’t enough for you.”

“Enough what?”

“Enough anything. Excitement, maybe. Fun. It’s all kid stuff and routines and bickering sometimes.”

“And you think Catherine was more fun? That it was fun at all?”

“You want me to be honest? I think you loved every minute you spent with her.”

This was close to the bone. Hardy chose his words with some care. “That’s not the same as wanting to be with her now. It seems to me that the way this marriage thing works is you keep making a choice to be in it every day.”