To Catch the Moon (40 page)

“Who does he say signed it?”

“Molly Bracewell.”

Milo watched her. “You believe him.”

She said nothing.

“But you don’t believe Bracewell had anything
to do with it.” Could Joan have sent such a letter? Clearly Alicia
thought there was a good chance she had.

Alicia was silent for some time. The souffle
was cleared; salads were placed before them. Both left them
untouched.

“There’s a lot that’s very ugly about
Treebeard,” she said eventually. “It’s easy to believe he’s guilty
of this murder, given not only the evidence but his character. But
it’s people like Treebeard who made me become a prosecutor.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “Where I grew up, I saw a
lot of people get victimized and not know how to do anything about
it. They got robbed or they got assaulted and they just ate it.
They didn’t know how to file charges, or they didn’t speak English,
and the cops didn’t always explain things. I don’t only blame the
cops, though, because they had way more than they could handle.”
She paused. “It was just a lot of unfair stuff. People got screwed
every day. They got screwed by life.”

“You think that’s what’s happening to
Treebeard?”

“He’s an easy mark.” She shrugged. “All I can
say is, I hear his story and something in me believes him.” She
raised her eyes to Milo’s. “And I’m not exactly easy to
convince.”

His mind was working. He had to be careful
here. “So you see that as part of your job? Trying to make sure
people don’t get screwed by the system?”

“You make me sound like an idealistic
fool.”

“Not a fool. But—”

She cut in. “Idealistic? I probably am. Given
all the shit I see I’m amazed I can be.” Abruptly she picked up her
fork and dug into her salad. He took her cue and for a time they
ate in silence. Just as abruptly she started speaking again. “I
probably lost my elections for that reason.”

“You ran for office?” This was another
revelation. “What did you run for?”

“Judge. Twice.”

So she’d lost twice. Somehow that didn’t
surprise him. She could be unyielding and politics was a dance of
compromise. She also had that enormous chip on her shoulder when it
came to the wealthy and powerful, who often had a lot to say about
who won elections. “Why did you lose?”

“Because I don’t suck up. I get in people’s
faces. I think it’s more important to do the work than to
network.”

He smiled at her. “You’re not very
cooperative, either.”

The look she gave him was far less withering
than it might have been a few weeks before. “You’re suggesting I’d
go farther if I were?”

He spread his hands as if in innocence. “Hey,
you can practice on me.”

Then her eyes turned playful. “I already
am.”

By the time they finished their
entrees—grilled lamb chops for him and a tenderloin of beef for
her—their truce had solidified into a straightforward give and
take. Milo had divulged everything he learned from Molly Bracewell
and in turn been rewarded with several tidbits from Alicia’s
conversation with Franklin Houser and more details on her
jail-house interview of Treebeard.

It was win-win, as he had known it would be.
He was invigorated, as he had expected.

Their vanilla bean brulee arrived. Like the
souffle it was set in the center of the table for them to share.
Milo laughed watching Alicia dig into its hard caramelized surface.
“You’re a beer drinker, a meat eater, and a dessert lover.”

“What can I tell you? I believe in real
food.”

This was one refreshing woman.
Where was
the hard-boiled prosecutor?
he wondered.
Where was the
closed-faced attorney?

She looked up from the brulee. “So why did
you tell me before that you need a killer story?” She set down her
spoon and leaned her elbows on the table, her eyes curious. “Aren’t
you way too big a star to have to be a good reporter?”

This was not a subject he cared to delve
into. “Let’s just say my star isn’t quite as high as it used to
be.”

Her brows arched in clear surprise. “You’re
having trouble with your higher-ups? I would think you’d be a
master schmoozer.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I mean it as a compliment. I was even
thinking you could, I don’t know ...” Her voice trailed off. She
retrieved her spoon and took another bite of the dessert. He had
the sense she was deliberately avoiding his eyes. “Maybe give me a
little advice.”

He was immensely flattered. “
You’re
asking
me
for advice?”

She raised her eyes then. “Don’t make this
harder for me than it already is, Milo.”

“All right.” He thought for a moment. It
occurred to him that he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d
been asked for his counsel. “I would say there’s a difference
between being true to yourself and being stupid. Pardon the choice
of word,” he added, as she opened her mouth to object. “What I mean
is, you can make strategic compromises. It doesn’t mean you’re
selling out. That’s what I believe the most effective politicians
do.”

She nodded. Clearly she was listening
intently, which he found very satisfying. He realized that few
people paid him this much attention.

“There’s something else,” he said. “Life is a
series of small steps forward. It’s trite but it’s true. Success
works the same way. Take it one small step, one small challenge at
a time.”

“Now this I’m having trouble buying.” The
spoon went back down beside the nearly empty brulee. She leaned her
elbows on the table. “You’re not exactly an expert in the slow
rise, Milo. You had a huge boost by being born your father’s
son.”

“Maybe less of one than you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“True, my father was in the diplomatic corps,
and at the end of his career he held a prime post, ambassador to
Washington. But he was not a wealthy man.”

She clearly had trouble buying that. “But
don’t you pretty much have to be wealthy to be an ambassador? I
mean, that’s the way it works in this country.”

“My family has a distinguished history,
that’s true. We’re aristocrats, I guess you’d say. But the bulk of
the family money was gone before my father’s time. He had to work
for a living. Because of the family, he had a lot of friends who
created opportunities for him, which he made the most of.”

She was very still. “What about you?”

He leaned forward. “You and I have that in
common, Alicia. I have to work for a living, too.”

She spoke softly. “I’ll be damned.”

He raised his hands. “Hey, don’t get too
comfortable. I’m still a member of the despised ruling class.”

She tossed her napkin at him across the
table. He caught it. “Shall we order a nightcap? Maybe a glass of
port?” They’d been dining for over three hours but he didn’t want
the evening to end. It was a weeknight and he had an early flight
the next day, but at the moment he didn’t care.

“Sure.” So she didn’t, either. He ordered;
their glasses arrived; again they raised them to toast. “My turn,”
she said, then clinked her glass against his. “To strategic
compromises.”

He smiled, and sipped. Around them the
restaurant was emptying. It was late. It was time for rock-bottom
truths. “So, Alicia.”

She gazed at him over her port, a wary look
in her eyes. “What?”

“Why’d you always give me such a hard
time?”

She arched her brow. “Milo Pappas, you don’t
know what a hard time is.”

“No, seriously.” He kept his tone light but
he really wanted to know. “From the first day I met you, you were
always a little distrustful of me, a little suspicious. Why is
that?”

She eyed him. He could tell she was deciding
whether this was a time for truth or for fiction. Finally she
spoke. “You were a little too slick. A little too good-looking. A
little too sure of yourself.”

“That works for most people.”

She said nothing.

“Not for you, apparently.”

She shook her head. “No, not for me.”

“And now?”

Their eyes met. The couple at the table
nearest theirs rose and headed out. Their section of the restaurant
was empty.

“I guess,” she said, “I know now there’s
someone real under all that gloss.”

He had to laugh. “There sure is.”

“It’s funny.” She cocked her head, swilling
the port in her glass, rich and crimson. “My father would be
thrilled I was having dinner with someone like you. A big TV news
star. An ambassador’s son.” She shook her head and raised her eyes
to his. “He’d think he’d done his job well.”

Milo watched her. Clearly her father had. “He
would have so many reasons to be proud of you, Alicia.”

She said nothing. Milo had the sudden
impression that she was struggling not to cry. “He died at age
thirty-six.” Her voice was so soft he had to lean in close to hear
her, even in the empty room. “He didn’t live long enough to see me
become a lawyer.”

“Somehow I bet he knows you did.”

“Sometimes I feel like I failed him. By
losing those two elections.”

“You didn’t fail him, Alicia.”

“He always wanted me to be a politician, a
big Latina politician.” She kept speaking, almost as if to herself.
“He had a shitty life. And he was only one year older than I am now
when he died.”

“He couldn’t have had a shitty life.” Milo
had no knowledge of Alicia’s father yet felt perfectly confident
making this pronouncement. “He had you for a daughter.”

She raised her eyes to his then, and they
were brimming. Milo felt a jolt pierce his own soul. “That’s what
he said to me once. He said I was the great joy of his life.”

That was so easy to imagine. To his
astonishment, Milo felt his own eyes tear, partly for Alicia,
partly for the father he wasn’t so sure was proud of him.
Wordlessly Alicia grasped his hand across the small table. For a
time they both just held on. Their waiter moved past, not
stopping.

A second later Milo squeezed her hand. “I
hope he doesn’t think we’re crying over the food.”

She smiled, a weak but dazzling smile he
could look at for a long, long time. “I should go fix my
makeup.”

“There’s no need. You’re beautiful.” That
wasn’t a line, he realized, not an exercise of his easy charm. That
was truth.

She squeezed his hand back. There was truth
in that, too. And promise.

*

Alicia thought later how odd it was that she
and Milo behaved like strangers in the cab back to the hotel. They
maintained a public decorum, even an indifference, never talking,
never touching, erecting a facade of placid companionability that
belied what surged beneath.

When they arrived back at the hotel, she
followed him wordlessly. He did not ask; she did not answer. She
was beyond such mundane arrangements. If he was using her, then she
was using him. It was a trade she was willing to make. Choosing his
room gave her the power to retreat, should she feel the need.
Escape she could well imagine, a midnight flight down the carpeted
corridors back to her own room, if the abandonment of her good
sense suddenly became too much for her. Or if he did.

Once alone, they faced each other. His kiss
was a marvelous thing, delicate and learned, excruciating in its
subtlety. Demanding, too, and ultimately frustrating, like an
overlong first act to a play so ripe with promise. There was
greater reward when more than mouths were involved, when her
sweater was pulled over her head and her bra unclasped and tossed
aside, when his fingers found her breasts, then guided his tongue
there, to wreak havoc with her memories of what past men had done
to her, as if they were mere amateurs and here she had found a
master player.

They were standing, though unsteady on their
feet. Perhaps the unreliable tectonic plates beneath Nob Hill were
choosing that reckless hour to shift and resettle. They collapsed
onto the bed, feathery beneath them. She would not allow only her
own skin to be exposed to the night air; she was curious, too; his
clothing was a hindrance she had no interest in accommodating. Off
it came, exposing a body she had pictured in her mind’s eye yet
whose details captivated her. He was as beautiful as she had
imagined, his rampant desire for her more than enticing.

He was hard to control, though. He was not
satisfied with a half-dressed woman; that he quickly made clear. He
wanted her naked; this was not a man satisfied with half measures.
She could not hide her distension, the moisture he had called up in
her. It was his to play with and heighten. His tongue was a wanton
invader in her private places, a teaser that lapped and lunged and
titillated all while she both urged him on and tried to corral him,
her hands clenched in his dark curly hair.

That game had to stop, too. Neither wanted to
play it to its obvious conclusion. There was too tempting an
alternative.

She forced him onto his back, which startled
him at first. Yet judging from the glint in his dark eyes, she knew
he would play the game her way, at least for a time. Their need was
so great, or perhaps it was because they fit so well, that they
forged together with exquisite ease. She rode him teasingly at
first, then with more purpose, her head thrown back, his hands on
her breasts, then on her hips, forcing her to pummel him with
greater urgency.

She had guessed right; he would not let her
finish what they’d started. He claimed that as a man’s right. He
toppled her onto her back. She responded by twisting her legs
around his torso. He answered that move by pinning her arms against
the pillows.

Maybe they would have reached even greater
heights had they been able to control themselves. Such a delirious
game sometimes ended too soon, especially the first time it was
played. But they were spent when it was over, and entwined, and
soon asleep, damp and comfortable. Until the next wave assaulted
them, just before the dawn.