“I’m surprised to see you here, Senator,” said Kyle. “I thought you would be on your knees in front of a pack of fat cats, working for your money.”
“I ducked out of the fund-raiser,” said Senator Truscott. “Our discussion raised a number of questions that I needed to ask my mother.”
“Did you get your answers?”
“Yes.”
Kyle looked back at the old woman. The phone call had convinced him that the murder of Colleen O’Malley, the attempted murder of his father, the murder of Laszlo Toth, all of it had been at her insistence. “I wouldn’t rely too much on what she told you, if I were you.”
“Is that it?” she snapped. “Is that the O’Malley file?”
“This is it,” said Kyle. “The whole caboodle.”
“A ny copies?”
“Not that I made.”
“How about your . . . accomplice?”
“Accompl ice?”
“The man you were with. Your partner in crime. Oh, one needn’t be a genius to know you’ve not been alone. It would take more than the likes of you to get this far.”
“There are no copies,” said Kyle.
“Good,” she said. “I’ll trust you, because you are young and I am idealistic. But be forewarned, Mr. Byrne, you’d be wise not to trifle with me.”
“No chance of that,” said Kyle with a wink. Then he turned from her and walked over to the senator. “I thought you weren’t buying.”
“I’m not,” said Truscott.
“But she is. Isn’t it the same thing?”
“I don’t have control over what she does.”
“But she apparently has control over you.”
“Don’t be impertinent,” said the woman, interjecting herself forcefully into the conversation. “He is a United States senator, and I am nothing but an old lady.”
“Don’t sell yourself short for my benefit,” said Kyle, still looking at the senator, whose chiseled face turned even more stony under Kyle’s gaze. “You might be as old as dust, but you’re no lady.”
“Feisty for a messenger boy, aren’t you?”
“This is all her doing,” said the senator. “I didn’t even know about it until you showed up. But I admit I’ve had second thoughts since we spoke. I believe I can do more good in the Senate than out on the street.”
“Oh, I get it,” said Kyle. “You wouldn’t want to deprive the republic of your irreplaceable value. Your patriotism warms my heart.”
“I simply began to see that maybe it is not the worst thing for everyone if the file disappears once and for all.”
“She’s persuasive, isn’t she? I suppose she keeps your balls quite safe in her pocketbook.”
“That’s enough,” she hissed from her side of the room.
Kyle turned his head toward her. “What, now you’re going to tell me you don’t like feisty?”
“Let’s get this done and you on your pathetic way.”
“Fine by me,” said Kyle. “But I must say, I’m disappointed in you, Senator. You impressed the hell out of me this afternoon. I thought I had actually met a politician with sincerity, but I suppose that’s like a vampire with sincerity—does it really matter if he sincerely wants to suck your blood?”
“I meant what I said this afternoon.”
“That means you were against buying the file before you were for it. Those questions you had for your mother. Were they about what happened to Colleen O’Malley?”
“My mother assured me that she wasn’t involved.”
“How about Laszlo Toth? What did she say about him?”
“My mother is not a murderer.”
“She didn’t pull the trigger, if that’s what you mean. I guess she’s in no condition to do her own wet work. But I’ve watched enough TV to know that you don’t have to pull the trigger to be guilty of murder.”
“Can we end these mad ravings and make our deal?” said Mrs. Truscott. “And then, dear, I have a psychiatrist I can recommend. He is quite fashionable—all the best loons see him.”
“What are you getting at, Byrne?” said the senator.
“You know a Spangler?”
“Spangler?” He looked at his mother. “What about it?”
“There’s a Spangler wanted in the killing of Laszlo Toth. And I’d bet he was involved in Colleen O’Malley’s strange drowning death, too. And the funny thing is, if you look in this file, the lawyer opposing my father, the one representing your interests in the O’Malley matter, was a Spangler, too. Want to look?”
“What’s he talking about?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“Mother?”
“I have no idea what this maniac is talking about.”
“Well, there you go, Senator. Another mystery for you to solve, or to sweep under the family carpet, though I imagine it’s getting pretty lumpy by now. Here’s another lump.”
Kyle spun the file in the air toward the senator. Truscott didn’t move to catch it. The file hit the floor with a plunk, and he just stared at it while a briefcase appeared, as if magically, in the old lady’s twitchy hands.
“Take your money and get the hell out of my house,” she said.
Kyle gazed at the briefcase for a moment, thought of all the dreams contained within its flat gray walls, the new car, the trip to Aruba, a real start in life. And he also thought of his father outside, listening intently to the headphones as the scene audibly played out for him.
“Keep it,” said Kyle finally. He could almost see the wince on his father’s face, as if he’d been slapped. “Spruce the place up. Buy another pillar for outside, you can never have too many. I don’t want your damn money.”
The senator looked up, his face creased in bewilderment.
“Don’t look so puzzled, Senator,” said Kyle. “You’re the one who convinced me. You told me you weren’t going to turn me into a blackmailer. After talking to you, I decided I wasn’t going to let anyone else do it either.” Another shot across his father’s jaw. “So take the file. For free. This story belonged to Colleen O’Malley, not my father. He didn’t have the right to use it for his own gain, and neither do I. My father was wrong to bring it out fourteen years ago, and I’m trying to right the wrong by giving it back to you.” Slap, slap, slap.
“If you don’t want the money,” said the senator, “why did you come?”
“To put Colleen’s ghost to rest,” said Kyle. “And to see what I could learn about Spangler.” And to tell Liam Byrne over the wire what Kyle couldn’t tell him face-to-face: that he loved him, yes, but he wasn’t going to be him.