Troubled Waters (14 page)

It had served her well, her wooden outer face, her mask that could smile or look just plain puzzled while the inner face raged and cried and blushed and nobody could see it.

Except Ritamae. Sometimes. Like now.

“Jan, talk to me,” Ritamae called, her voice reaching through the holes, grabbing out to her. Trying to pull her to her side of the barrier. “Tell me what you thinkin', babe.”

Paybacks. She was thinking paybacks. A nice word, one she hadn't used before, not even to herself. Ritamae had given it to her, like a precious gift. Even if she hadn't meant to. Even if she was trying for a warning instead.

But the word struck a deep chord in Jan's heart. The inside face, the one that wasn't made of wood, smiled at the word. Paybacks.

She rolled it around on her tongue like single-malt.

Walt Koeppler ran the tape back as soon as Ritamae Johnson was ushered out of Jan's presence. He smiled as he listened to the talk of Rapaport running drugs. As an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, he didn't have jurisdiction over narcotics trafficking. But he knew someone who did. He picked up the phone and dialed a number from memory.

The phone was answered on the first ring. “Drug Enforcement Administration, Krepke.”

“Dale, it's Walt. I've got a line on that guy you were after a while back. Joel Rapaport. Yeah. Let's have some lunch and I'll fill you in.”

There was more than one way to skin a cat, Koeppler decided as he and Dale agreed to meet at Tony Packo's on the east side, far, far away from downtown ears.

A factory, Jan Gebhardt had said. To Walt, that meant only one thing: Joel Rapaport and his ex-wife were using illegal aliens to make methamphetamines. The five years max Gebhardt and Jameson might get for yesterday's arrest would pale in comparison with the nice long sentences the whole group would receive for conspiracy to manufacture and sell hard drugs.

And what was even better was that he could use Jan Gebhardt as a stalking-horse to lead him into the inner workings of the sanctuary movement.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

All the times I'd dreamed of seeing Wes Tannock again I'd visualized myself as: (a) glamorous, in a silver lamé sheath gown, hair tossed back like a tawny mane; (b) sophisticated, in a designer silk suit and jade green pumps; (c) professional, swaying a recalcitrant judge with my eloquence while he looked on, admiration in his eyes; (d) sexy, in a red leather miniskirt and skintight sweater, boots up to God knows where; (e) all of the above, an unlikely combination of Sandra Day O'Connor and Frederick's of Hollywood.

The upshot of these fantasies was that Wes saw me for the first time, saw Cass, not Ron's little sister, not tagalong Cassie who worshiped from afar.

Instead, I'd crashed into him like a clumsy idiot.

I stepped back and made my apology, trying to regain some veneer of dignity.

“Cassie,” he said in a pleased tone. I shook his hand numbly.

It was strange seeing Wes grown up. Jowlier, heavier in the face. Hairline receding, but in a sexy way. Manicured hands veiny, fingers knobby with early arthritis.

Still sexy as hell. Just looking at the dark curly hairs on his wrist sent my pulse racing. What would it feel like to have those manicured hands roving my soft naked skin? How would it feel to ran my fingers through the thinning hair, gaze into his eyes and watch the sun glint off the little green flecks in the iris?

Not that I was going to find out. I'd just recovered from one charismatic, driven, stimulating man and I had no intention of starting anything with another. The attraction I felt was powerful—but that very power warned me off.

An olive-skinned man I'd never seen before stepped briskly toward the picnic table. Wes turned toward the new arrival. “Everything went okay at the focus group?” The man nodded, then smiled broadly.

“Cassie,” he said, his deep voice warm. He reached out a hand on which a class ring shone like a ruby firefly. His other hand held a stub of cigar.

My God, Tarky!
Gone was the Dutch Master haircut, the thick beard, the faded sweatshirt. In place of the Armenian hippie I'd known that summer stood a stocky lawyer in a blue three-piece suit, a gold watch chain spanning his broad belly, cordovan wingtips on once-sandaled feet.

Shock must have shown in my face. Tarky gave a single harsh bark—what passed for laughter with him—and said, “Hey, we all grow up.”

“Yeah, sure, Tark,” I muttered. And reminded myself that I'd traded in her own stick-straight hair for a salon perm ten years earlier. And started buying clothes at department stores instead of the Rajarani Indian Boutique. Times change.

One thing that hadn't changed: As soon as Tarky came, Wes grew larger. Even though Wes was the one working the room, meeting each of our eyes in turn with his compelling gaze, Tarky's presence was, in some mystical way, the source of his energy. As though Tarkanian had always been his campaign manager, even when both were radical law students with nothing but contempt for conventional politics.

While Wes strolled over to the picnic table to press the flesh, Tarky sidled up to me and said in a low voice, “Why now?”

Even when I'd been young and in love with Wes, it had been Tarky whose opinion really mattered. He was the one who when you made a joke or said something really radical, you kind of peeked over to see how he reacted. If he laughed, you'd been funny; if he said “right on,” you'd been politically out there. I'd wanted Wes's body, but when it came to approval, Tark the Shark was the arbiter of all I'd said and done.

So I wanted to answer his question with something so clever, so intelligent, that he would know once and for all that I was now a grownup, not to be patronized.

But what the hell did he mean,
Why now?

At least the cigar he held wasn't lit. It reeked anyway, but it would have been far worse with smoke emanating from it.

An impatient frown knotted the bushy black eyebrows. “Why now?” he repeated. “Why did Jan come back three weeks before Election Day?”

“You think this whole thing is about you and Wes? My brother's facing jail time and all you care about is the election?”

“Cassie, I get paid to worry about the election.” He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth.

I turned and walked toward the others without a word.

Wes leaned on the edge of the picnic table. “We can't stay long,” he said. “We can't eat anything either. When on the campaign trail, the candidate eats nothing that isn't provided by a constituent. One of the basic rules of American politics.”

“It is not enough to eat,” Tarky intoned, “one must be seen to eat.”

He settled himself on one of the benches, his ample rear end sagging like a beanbag. I sat next to him, as far away as possible from the mixture of cigar, aftershave, and male sweat.

He fixed his penetrating eyes on Jan and said, “I'll repeat the question I just asked Mama Cass: Why now?”

Jan stood next to Ron's chair, as if gathering strength from his nearness. Her fingers twisted together as though to remove an invisible pair of gloves.

“It started out as a feeling,” she explained. I sat forward, elbows on the picnic table, listening to a voice from the past.

“I mean, the arrests came out of the blue. There was no reason for anybody to be following us on that road.”

“Which arrests?” Tarky cut in. “What year are you in?”

She dropped her eyes, her hair falling over her forehead. “Eighty-two,” she murmured. “And I guess I'm talking about both times. The time Miguel died and the night the whole thing fell apart. We were set up. Somebody who knew about the sanctuary movement tipped off Walt Koeppler and that's how Ron and I got busted. There was an informer in the group, just like in '69.”

“Of course there was an informant in '69,” Rap said, “and his name was Kenny Gebhardt. If you weren't obsessed, you'd see that as clearly as any of us. That stupid little fuckup ratted on us and that's why we got arrested. No mystery, Jan.”

“And I suppose Kenny dropped a dime from the grave and tipped Walt Koeppler that we'd be on the dune road in '82?” Ron retorted.

I stared at my brother. Could he really believe all this nonsense about informers and Kenny being murdered?

“Of course it's completely impossible that
two
people fourteen years apart are capable of betrayal,” Tarky replied. He stared at the tree behind the sagging wire fence, as if his remark were totally academic, addressed to no one in particular.

Wes raised his hands in a peacemaking gesture; his wedding band caught the light and glared into my eyes.

“Look, this may sound monumentally selfish, but all I want,” he said, “is for all of you to keep me out of this. This sixties bullshit isn't going to help the campaign one bit. I had nothing to do with the sanctuary thing anyway,” he pointed out in a persuasive tone that edged a little too close to a self-serving whine for my taste. “Which is something my opponent isn't going to give a damn about, by the way. If my name pops up in this mess, I'm going down with the voters of this state, even if I get a clean bill at the end of it.” He looked at me. “I'm counting on you for this, Cassie.”

Why did everyone suddenly seem to think I had the power to make all this go away? Anyone who thought I could talk Ron into keeping Jan quiet didn't know either of them very well.

At least Wes and Tarky weren't making honest-to-God threats, I told myself, remembering Rap's words in front of the courthouse.

“I'm on it, Wes,” Tarky said. “You know as well as I do that the public has the attention span of a flea. The day after the hearing, there'll be a new scandal. This thing's a three-day story at best.”

“That's three more days than I want to spend wandering down memory lane, Tark,” Wes replied evenly.

“I think Kenny found out who the real informer was and that's why he was killed.” Jan's soft voice was stubborn.

“Jan, he wasn't killed.” I spoke slowly, as if to a child or a foreigner. “He killed himself.”

“Just listen, Cass,” my brother said.

“I kept having this dream after Kenny died,” she began, her voice thin and childlike. “His body was all full of worms. They were white, but kind of greenish, like they'd glow in the dark, you know? They were going in and out of these holes in his body, but the real bad part was, he wasn't dead. He was alive, in that horrible narrow box, and the worms were going in and out and he was begging me to come get him out before they ate him up. I used to wake up shaking and sobbing from that dream—and then I'd have to take a drink to warm me up, I was so cold.”

She rubbed her arms with her nervous hands, as if chilled by too-strong air conditioning.

There was a terrible honesty about her. I didn't believe a word she was saying, yet I couldn't take my eyes off her. She fumbled in her jeans pocket for a cigarette. Dana handed her a lit one from which to get a light. She handed Dana back the butt and held her own cigarette between two fingers, as if it were a joint.

“He was trying to tell me he didn't kill himself,” Jan said.

She looked older than her years. Her teeth were yellow and chipped; the translucency of her skin spoke of the damage done to her body by the years of abuse.

It was then that I had my epiphany: If Kenny was murdered, then I was innocent. If he hadn't killed himself, then my harsh rejection of him hadn't caused his death. I could lay down at least one of the guilt burdens I'd been carrying since that summer.

If I believed Jan.

It was like asking me to believe in healing crystals or tarot cards. A pretty fantasy, even an elegant system of thought. But not reality.

Reality was Kenny's white face as he begged me to believe him. “It wasn't me,” he'd said. “I didn't call the cops. Honest.”

“I don't talk to traitors,” I'd replied, my face a stone. Nineteen years old and hard as nails. No forgiveness for betrayal.

Reality was Kenny's twisted, still body under the weeping beech.

If I accepted Jan's assertion that Kenny was murdered, would it be for his sake, or for my own?

My voice was more vehement than I intended. “Bullshit. Sheer, unadulterated bullshit.”

“You don't think Jan could be right?” Ron's voice was carefully neutral.

“Oh, well, dreams are good solid evidence, everyone knows that. Anyone appears in a dream and says he didn't kill himself, you can take that to the bank.” I was hitting my stride now, sarcasm protecting me as always. “The worms are a wonderful touch.”

A hand touched my shoulder. “Easy, Cass,” a man's voice said. But all the men at the table were within my line of sight, so who—

I turned my head and looked up at the face of Ted Havlicek, the man I'd searched for in vain among the press people in the courtroom.

He was the same old Ted, Midwestern-bland in looks and manner. Glasses instead of contact lenses, a haircut at least ten years out of date, slacks and a sport shirt instead of shorts and T-shirt.

“So the circle is unbroken,” Rap said. “We're all together again, one big happy family. Except of course for Kenny. Maybe Jan can hold a séance and bring him back.”

“Shut up, Rap,” Dana said through a mouthful of smoke. She gave Ted a look that held no friendliness. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

“I asked him,” Wes replied. “Since this mess is bound to end up in the newspapers, I thought it made sense to give Ted an exclusive in return for the opportunity to, shall we say, shape the story?”

“There's another reason he's here,” Jan added. She gave Ted an intense stare and said, “Tell them, Ted.”

“Wait a minute.” I held up a warning hand. “I have a client to protect here. Maybe Jan doesn't mind talking to the press without her attorney present, but I'm not letting Ron make statements without a clear understanding about how they're going to be used.”