“It’s done.”
Howard said, “Hold on.” He put the cell phone on the granite counter in the kitchen of his Upper East Side brownstone and supported himself on the countertop with both hands. He hadn’t slept in days and he felt like his body was shaking all the time, like he was walking around in a world with nonstop low-level earth tremors.
This was the call he was waiting for, and now that he’d received it, he had to steady himself, take a few breaths. He picked up the cell again and said, “I’m here.”
“Go to your computer.”
Howard hauled himself up onto one of the barstools and opened the laptop on the raised stretch of counter. He entered the Whirl360 address into the Web browser and found his way to that Orchard Street window.
The head was gone.
“Lewis,” he said.
“I’m here.”
“I looked. It’s gone.”
“Yeah. She got it done.”
Howard was pleased, but he wasn’t about to shower any accolades on the woman who’d screwed this thing up from the get-go. “Any complications?”
“Some.”
“Any that could blow back and hurt us?”
“No.”
“Okay. Where are we on the other matters?”
“She’s gone back to Dayton to babysit the mother. Still waiting. And I’m still looking for our visitor.”
“It’s nice to have a little bit of good news for once,” Howard said. “But we’re still deep in the woods.”
“Yes.” Lewis paused. “I’ll keep you posted.”
Howard ended the call, slid the phone across the counter, and put his head into his hands. God, he needed a drink and it was only eight. He needed his strength. He had an appointment with Morris Sawchuck this morning.
THE man was becoming increasingly restless. He wanted to reactivate his campaign plans. Announce formally, after delaying for nine months, that he would be seeking the office of the governor of the State of New York.
It had made sense, back in August, for Morris to put his ambitions on hold. One very personal reason that had become very public, and another—his complicity in the CIA director’s deal with terrorists—that he’d prayed would never become public at all.
And a third reason he knew nothing about.
Oblivious, Morris believed there was no longer a reason to put his career on the back burner. Enough time had passed. Had he known a woman named Allison Fitch was still out there—and that she could destroy him—he might well have felt differently.
Every day, Howard Talliman lived with the fear the woman would surface. He checked Web sites on his phone before he was even out of bed. He grabbed the TV remote, turned on CNN in his bedroom, flipped back and forth between it and the Today show. Imagined Wolf Blitzer saying, “And now, in a CNN exclusive, we talk to a woman who’s come out of hiding to accuse Morris Sawchuck and the people around him of trying to have her killed. Not only is she accusing the New York attorney general of attempted murder, but of being complicit in the disgraced former CIA director’s plan not to pursue charges against—”
That was when Howard imagined turning off the TV, getting his hands on a gun, and blowing his brains out.
Not unlike what Barton Goldsmith ultimately decided to do.
While Howard and Morris fretted that the attorney general’s involvement in the CIA director’s deal with terrorists would become known, Goldsmith was feeling the pressure as well. He was going to be called to testify before a congressional committee. Everything was going to come out.
So Barton Goldsmith rose early one morning, walked into the backyard of his Georgetown home, stood among the beautiful flowers in his garden, put the barrel of a pistol in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
God bless him, Howard thought. Morris, as was his nature, was circumspect. “A terrible thing,” he said in an interview. “Such a loss.” Inside, Howard believed, Morris had to be dancing a jig.
So with Goldsmith out of the picture, Morris felt that threat had been neutralized. But Howard knew a bigger one remained. If Fitch surfaced, and talked, everything would start spilling out. Howard didn’t know what, exactly, Fitch had heard, or thought she’d heard, Bridget saying on her cell phone during that Barbados vacation. But she’d intimated she knew something.
Sooner or later, Fitch would overcome her fear of the authorities. When an attorney general, or at least those working on his behalf, orders a hit on you, it’s bound to make you hesitant about going to the police. But one day, Howard believed, she’d screw up her courage.
Howard could not allow Morris to move forward with his plans while that remained a possibility. The trick was keeping the man in check without telling him why he needed to hold off.
Howard could not tell him the truth.
Howard could never tell him the truth.