The Nomination (5 page)

No way it wasn't going to rain. No golf today.

Amy would get flustered if he showed up before nine. Amy didn't care what he did or who he did it with as long as he gave her his schedule and stuck to it. Amy didn't do well with surprises. Maybe he'd drive out to the club anyway, sit in for a rubber or two of bridge, have supper with Jonah.

The intercom buzzed. He turned back to his desk and pressed the connecting button. “What's up, Arlene?” he said.

“Mr. Brody's on line one,” came Arlene's voice.

“Brody? The—”

“He's calling from the White House, Tom. I'm sitting here trying not to wet my pants.”

Larrigan smiled at the image of Arlene Bennett, his plump white-haired secretary who'd become a grandmother for the second time back in January, wetting her pants. “Nothing to get worked up about,” he said. “It's probably just the president again. You know how he keeps pestering me.”

“Yes, that man is a nuisance, isn't he?” Arlene chuckled. “Want me to get rid of him?”

“I'll handle it, thanks.” Larrigan disconnected from Arlene, took a deep breath, picked up his telephone, and pressed the blinking button on the console. “This is Judge Larrigan,” he said.

“It's Pat Brody, Judge. How are you?”

“Just fine, Mr. Brody.” Larrigan paused. He wasn't going to let Brody hear his eagerness. “How can I help you?”

“You can help me by saying hello to the president. Is this a convenient time?”

“Sure. Of course.” Damn, thought Larrigan. That definitely sounded eager.

A moment later he heard: “Tom?” It was that familiar raspy voice.

“Hello, Mr. President.”

“I just wanted to say hello, Tom, and to tell you that I'm hearing nothing but good things about you.”

“Thank you, sir. I'm deeply honored.”

“I expect we'll be talking again soon,” said the president. “Things are moving pretty fast down here. You're still good with this?”

“Yes, I am. Of course.”

“That's fine, Tom. Great. We'll have to get out, play some golf one of these days. Okay, then. Pat Brody needs to speak to you again.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Larrigan. “I—”

But the president was no longer on the line.

Brody talked to the judge for nearly fifteen minutes, and by the time he finished, Larrigan realized that receiving a phone call from the president still left him a long way from donning the robes of a Supreme Court Associate Justice.

As Brody put it, he'd leaped the first hurdle. The list of possible nominees had grown significantly shorter.

First, the FBI would intensify its “background check.” If they found anything in Larrigan's personal or professional history that might embarrass the president or raise eyebrows on the Senate Judiciary Committee, his name would be eliminated from consideration. Assuming he passed muster with the FBI and became the president's nominee, Larrigan would be formally presented to the Washington press corps at a Rose Garden ceremony as soon as Justice Crenshaw made his official retirement announcement, whenever that happened to occur.

Then would come the press, digging and prying and nosing around for a story, an angle, a hint of scandal. And the president's opposition in the Senate would unleash their own hounds.

Of course, said Brody quietly—and, Larrigan thought, with a hint of ironic skepticism—he would pass with flying colors, and next thing he knew, he'd be a Justice of the Supreme Court. For life.

The best job in the world. Respect, power, security. Immortality.

Brody concluded: “Sit tight and don't talk about it. No interviews, on or off the record. If you've got a vacation lined up, take it. Preferably someplace where the media can't find you. And for God's sake, don't do anything . . . controversial.”

“I understand,” said Larrigan. “But it sounds like you're not—”

“The president is not ready tell the world what he told you today, Judge. You understand.”

In fact, Larrigan wasn't sure what exactly the president had told him. “Sure,” he said. “Of course I understand.”

“We'll be in touch with you, then.” Brody hesitated. “Congratulations, Judge.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Larrigan replaced the phone on its cradle and shivered. It was happening. It was really happening.

He swiveled around to gaze out his window again. While he'd been on the phone with the White House, the black thunderheads had rolled off to the west, and now the afternoon sun reflected in the windows of Boston's skyscrapers. The city looked bright and clean. Just like Tom Larrigan's future.

He hit the button on the intercom, and Arlene's voice said, “I want to hear all about it. Did you talk to him?”

“I can't tell you much, but yes, he and I had a pleasant chat. For now, I want to continue the moratorium on all interviews. And—”

“Tom,” said Arlene, “this is me.”

“I know. I'm sorry. You can probably figure it out, but I'm sworn not to say anything to anybody.”

“My God,” Arlene whispered.

“Oh,” said Larrigan with a chuckle, “I'm not God yet. Not by a long shot. But maybe, one of these days.” He paused. “If you utter a peep to anybody, young lady, you'll feel God's wrath, I promise you.”

“Have I ever disappointed you?”

“Never,” he said. “Anyway, I was supposed to play golf with Jonah Wright today. Call him and tell him I've got to cancel, please. Then you go home.”

“Okay. Is—?”

“I've just got some things to clean up here. You have a nice evening.”

“Yes, you too. This is very exciting.”

“Not a peep,” said Larrigan.

He waited until Arlene had left, then picked up his cell phone and called Eddie Moran.

“What's up?” said Moran.

“I just got off the phone with the White House.”

E
ddie Moran pecked out the number on his cell phone, wedged it between his ear and his shoulder, and lit a cigarette. The traffic on Route 1 hummed steadily past the parking lot where he was sitting in his rented Camry, most of it heading south to Islamorada, Marathon, and Key West.

The phone rang three times, and after the voicemail recording, Moran said, “Call me,” and disconnected.

He put the phone on the seat beside him and waited, and before he'd finished his cigarette, it rang.

He checked the number on the screen. Larrigan. He hit the “send” button and said, “Semper fi.”

“You secure?”

“Of course I'm secure.”

“Where are you?”

“Key Largo.” He hesitated. “In Florida.”

“I know where Key Largo is, for Christ's sake.”

“Did you know they named this place after a movie? That Bogart movie? I mean, when they made the movie, there was no place called Key Largo. So they—”

“Jesus Christ,” said Larrigan. “Did you find her?”

“She's working in one of these tame dolphin places. Tourists go there and pay seventy-five bucks to swim around with the fish. Can you believe it?”

“Dolphins are mammals, Eddie.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Moran cracked the window and flipped his cigarette butt out onto the pavement. “She gives this slide show before each swim. I caught her act. She does a nice job. It was kinda interesting. Bunny always liked animals. Had cats. I remember how her place always smelled of cat shit.” Moran blinked away a drop of sweat that had dribbled into his eye. “So, anyway, yeah, I found her. She's looking good. So now what do you want me to do?”

On the other end of the line, Larrigan hesitated. “I've got to know what she remembers, how she feels,” he said, “if there's any chance she'll . . .”

“It's gonna take a while. I can't just walk up to her, say, Hey, it's me, Eddie Moran. You remember old Tommy Larrigan, dontcha? Well, guess what?”

“For Christ's sake, Eddie, be discreet.”

“Have I ever let you down?”

“Not yet. And you better not this time.”

EDDIE MORAN SPENT the rest of the afternoon sweltering in the rented gray Camry. Every once in a while he'd switch on the ignition and turn the air conditioning on high, let it blow out the hot air, but he couldn't leave the motor running all day. So mostly he sat there with all the windows open, and every once in a while a puff of hot salty breeze would blow through.

He'd parked strategically in the supermarket lot on Route 1. Every road on the island attached itself to Route 1, he'd learned. Route 1—the same Route 1 that traced the crooked coastline of New England—was the spine of the Keys. People down here oriented themselves by the mile markers along the roadside. It was, “Second left after mile marker thirty-four,” or, “You come to a Japanese restaurant on your right, then look for mile marker fifty-nine.”

So he waited there at the corner of Route 1 and the side street that led down to the dolphin place on the ocean, close enough so he could see every face in every car that came along that side street. Sooner or later, Bunny Brubaker would have to pass directly in front of him.

He sweated and drank orange soda and ate beer nuts and smoked cigarettes and pissed in a plastic milk jug. The Marines had taught him how to blank his mind against the passage of time, how to remain alert without thinking about anything. Boredom was a state of mind, and Eddie Moran had learned to master it. He just watched the faces go by, registering everything, thinking about nothing.

Finally he spotted her. She was driving a maroon Volkswagen bug, braking for the stop sign right in front of him. Automatically he glanced at his wristwatch and jotted the time into the notebook on the seat beside him. 7:48 PM. The previous note read, “1:22. Called T. L.” He'd been sitting there a little more than six hours. That wasn't bad. Plenty of times he'd sat outside an apartment building all night and nothing had even happened.

When she pulled onto Route 1, heading south, he got a glimpse of her license plate. He hastily scratched the number into his notebook, too.

Bunny's old VW Beetle had a roof rack and a big plastic daisy stuck on top of the antenna. Considerate of her. He had no trouble hanging four cars behind her and keeping the daisy in sight.

She was a few years younger than Eddie, which put her somewhere in her early fifties now. But she still had nice tits. He'd noticed that right away, when she was talking about how smart dolphins were and how well they were treated in their caged-in pool and how the place wasn't a zoo but a “habitat.” Nice hair, too. Eddie Moran liked long hair, and Bunny Brubaker wore her auburn hair long and straight down her back, the same as she had in the old days. From where he'd been watching her, he couldn't tell if she dyed it, or if there was any gray in it.

Bunny Brubaker had been a real dazzler back then. She still looked good. If anything, a little thinner than she'd been back then.

Thirty-five years. He wondered if she'd even remember him.

The real question, of course, was what she remembered about Larrigan.

Up ahead he saw the right directional begin to blink on the maroon VW. She turned off onto a narrow side road, and he followed. There were no vehicles between them now, so he crept along, keeping plenty of distance between them. When she pulled into a driveway beside a little square flat-roofed modular house pretty much like all the other little square flat-roofed modular houses on the street, he kept going. The road ended half a mile later in a turnaround by the water. He stopped there for the length of time it took him to smoke a cigarette, then turned and headed slowly back up the street.

He took it all in as he drove back past her place: scraggly unkempt gardens, one shutter hanging loose on the front of the house, carport crammed with plastic barrels and cardboard boxes and green trash bags. An old sailboat was parked on a trailer beside the driveway, its hull green with mildew.

Hypotheses automatically formed in Eddie Moran's mind. The boat hadn't been in the water for a year or more. It belonged to some guy who wasn't around anymore. He figured Bunny wasn't much for yard work or home repair herself and probably couldn't afford to hire someone to do it for her. Or maybe she just didn't give a shit how the place looked. She didn't have her trash picked up or go to the dump very often. The house looked like it had maybe four or five small rooms—cheap and small, about right for a single woman who made a living giving the same speech about how great dolphins were over and over again.

Back on Route 1, from the parking lot of a Burger King this time, he was able to watch the end of Bunny Brubaker's dead-end street. He ate a chicken sandwich, large fries, chocolate shake, and kept an eye out for a maroon VW with a plastic daisy on the antenna until one in the morning. Then he drove back to his motel.

He followed the same routine the next day. Bunny left for the dolphin place at nine-fifteen in the morning. She got off work at seven-thirty in the evening, drove past the supermarket parking lot where Moran was parked, turned south onto Route 1, and went home.

On the third evening, the maroon VW turned north onto Route 1. Tonight she wasn't going straight home.

Eddie kept a discreet distance—Larrigan's favorite word, “discreet”—between them. Three or four miles north, she pulled into the gravel parking lot beside a low-slung rectangular building. The neon sign over the door identified it as Jake's Conch Hut. From the street, Eddie could see that it had an outdoor bar with three open sides and a thatched roof. He turned into the lot and parked in the far corner. He waited ten minutes after Bunny went to the bar, then went over to the bar himself.

The bar was shaped like a semicircle, and Bunny was seated at the far end. Two guys and a woman were at the near end. That was it. Jake's Conch Hut did not appear to be Key Largo's most popular hangout.

Moran hitched himself onto a stool, leaving two empty ones between himself and Bunny Brubaker.

The underside of the thatched roof was festooned with old fishing nets. A stuffed tarpon hung on the one wall behind the bar, and a television mounted on a bracket was showing a baseball game with the sound muted.

The bartender, a kid in his twenties with a neatly trimmed black beard and hoops in both ears, swiped at the bar in front of him. “What'll you have?” he said.

“Bud in a bottle,” Moran answered.

He took his pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, picked one out with his lips, and placed the pack on the bar in front of him. He fished his Zippo from his pants, lit up, and put the lighter on top of the cigarettes.

He glanced over at Bunny. Up close, he could see the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. But she still looked great. Nice skin, wide, sexy mouth, white even little teeth, and those big blue eyes. She could pass for about forty, Eddie thought. She was gazing up at the television and sipping from a glass of white wine. Christ, is that all women drank anymore? White wine?

In the old days, Bunny drank beer from a bottle.

A pack of cigarettes and a lighter sat by her elbow.

The bartender slid a bottle of Bud and a frosted mug in front of him. “Wanna run a tab?” he said.

Moran nodded.

Out of the corner of his eye he sensed Bunny giving him the onceover. He poured beer into his mug, took a long draught, dragged on his cigarette, stubbed it out in an ashtray, gazed up at the television, sighed, took another drink, and casually glanced at her.

Just in time to catch her hastily shifting her eyes up to the TV.

A couple minutes later he tapped another cigarette from his pack, picked up the Zippo, flicked it a few times, tapped it on the bar, flicked it again, blew on it.

He turned to her. “Excuse me, Miss. My lighter's out of fluid. Do you mind . . .?”

She smiled. A really great smile. “No problem,” she said.

She slid her lighter across the polished top of the bar to him. It was one of those cheap plastic throwaways. He lit his cigarette with it, then leaned toward her, holding it in his palm. “Thanks a lot,” he said.

She plucked the lighter gingerly from his hand, as if she was afraid to touch him. She was frowning, cocking her head, looking at him.

He smiled. “My name's Eddie,” he said.

“Jesus,” she whispered. “It
is
you.”

“Huh?”

“You don't remember?”

He pretended to study her face. Then he started shaking his head. “Bunny? Holy shit. Bunny Brubaker? Is that really you?”

“It's been a long time, Eddie,” she said softly.

“God,” he said. “You look terrific.” He picked up his cigarettes and beer and moved to the stool beside her. Up close, he could see the fine cross-hatching of lines around her mouth and the puckery softness of the flesh on her throat. But those tits still looked great, the way they pressed against the front of her white short-sleeved shirt. She was wearing the same khaki-colored shorts she'd worn when he'd listened to her dolphin speech, and her bare legs, wrapped around her barstool, were brown and smooth.

“You look good, too,” she said.

“I don't believe it,” he said. “Small world, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I always say. Small world.”

The bartender came by, and Moran ordered another Bud for himself and another glass of wine for the lady.

She plucked a cigarette out of her pack with her long fingernails.

Moran picked up her lighter, flicked it, and held the flame for her. She touched his hand, steadying it as she bent to the lighter, looking up at him, those nice blue eyes smiling at him, the front of her shirt opening, giving him a glimpse of cleavage.

Her eyes flickered for an instant. Her hand dropped away from his and she straightened on her stool. She took a long drag from her cigarette, tilted her chin, blew a long plume of smoke at the ceiling. A little smile played on her lips. “Sergeant Eddie Moran,” she said. “So what brings you to Key Largo?”

He shrugged. “Quick getaway. Little fishing, little diving. I'm headed back tomorrow. What've you been doing? Still with the Red Cross?”