“I hope so,” I said, and drove off. This time I really did go back to town.
9
By the time I got back to my motel, I was ready for some lunch, after which I planned to go visit Mrs. McNally.
A woman in a pink polyester uniform was sweeping the walk in front of my room, the sparkling dust motes getting to my sinuses immediately. When she saw me, she said, “Your friend’s in there waiting for you.”
“My friend?”
She shrugged. “That’s what he says. Your friend.”
She went back to her sweeping.
The scratched-up metal door and the rusted window screen and the dusty curtain behind it took on a sinister aspect now. My heart started hammering. This was like the old days in Cairo and Barcelona and Cannes. I loved it and hated it at the same time.
I went over, grabbed the doorknob and pushed the door inward hard enough to bang it against the inside wall.
The room was shadow. He sat in the armchair with the dark blue slipcovers meant to hide cigarette bums and wine stains. A narrow beam of sunlight exposed him.
He looked like the world’s youngest successful banker; snow-white hair and quick gritty blue eyes and a dark blue suit that must have cost a few thousand dollars. The face was the only thing that didn’t go with the clothes. He had to be sixty, but he didn’t look much older than forty-five or so.
“You’re Hokanson?”
I nodded. “And you’re Tolliver.”
“Yes.”
He got up and walked over and we shook hands. He shook hands firmly, but without any theatrics. “Could you use a sandwich and a cup of coffee, Mr. Hokanson?”
“I sure could.”
In the sunlight, what with his crow’s feet and the sorrow lines at either end of his mouth, he looked a little older but not much, still giving the impression that he was an impostor of some kind, kid face appended to adult body.
We’d been here twenty minutes now, and thus far he had told me the following, which I had written down dutifully in my little black book:
1. He had no daughter.
2. He had had a son, but he’d died at age 25.
3. Ten years ago, a woman who had pretended to be his wife broke into his home and stole several credit cards and ran up bills of more than $50,000 before the cards could be canceled.
4. He had plans to possibly enter the Republican primary next spring and was afraid that “Nora Conners” had been hired to discredit him in some way. Politics had become a very rough game. Thus far he had heard whispers that (a) his main corporation was facing bankruptcy; (b) that he frequented houses where girls as young as twelve could be had; and (c) that he had once bought his way out of a drunken hit-and-run accident.
5. He wanted to retain me to find out who “Nora Conners” was and why she had claimed to be his daughter. And what had led to her murder.
The place was small and made even smaller by the lunchtime crowd that had at least a dozen people standing and waiting for booths. It was one of those blissful oases of ignorance that had not yet heard that smoking causes lung cancer. Everybody, it seemed, had a cigarette going, even as he or she chewed his or her food. There were a couple three- and four-year-olds in the booth across from us. I was waiting for them to light up, too.
He shook his very white head. “No, not as fast. And not as cheaply, either. The press will be able to learn whatever the police learn but if you could find out who she really was and what she was up to — well, I could practice a little political damage control before all this hits the press.”
“Won’t you look like a victim to people? Why would they blame you for a woman who pretended she was your daughter?”
He smiled. He was a trim man, neatly shaved, manicured, crisply dressed, all of which left just the faintest hint of priggishness. Maybe it was his thin mouth and its constant implication of displeasure.
Before he answered, our waitress came around again, filling our coffee, taking away the plates from the chips and tuna sandwich I’d had, and the Egg Beaters and toast he’d had.
“People don’t remember things clearly,” he said. “By the time this story filters through the public consciousness, a lot of people will remember that I’d had an affair with this Nora, and maybe even that I’d been a suspect in her death.” He paused and raised his head a little. His neck was the only thing on him that looked his real age. “This morning I took the liberty of depositing ten thousand dollars in your bank account.”
This was my week for strange people wanting to give me a great deal of money. First Nora, now him.
“I’m not sure I buy your story.”
“Oh?” he said, his blue eyes hard.
“No, I think you’re interested in Nora and Vic for some other reason.”
“What other reason?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
He laughed. “Maybe you should investigate me first and then if you’re satisfied with what you find, start on Nora and Vic.”
“You say you had a son?”
“Yes. He died a long time ago, just as I told you.”
“What about your wife?”
“She’s dead, too. Nearly ten years ago.”
“Do you have a lady friend now?”
“No one special. I’m not sure I see the relevance of that.”
“Maybe Nora was angling for some kind of blackmail setup. Sometimes that works best with somebody close to the person being blackmailed. A girlfriend who decides to cash in on her rich boyfriend tells an accomplice the boyfriend’s darkest secret. And the blackmailer takes it from there, after agreeing to split fifty-fifty with the girlfriend.”
“They sound like nice people, your girlfriend and blackmailer.”
“So nobody’s blackmailing you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And you don’t have anything they can blackmail you for?”
He smiled. “Do you know the Balzac quote that behind every great fortune is a scandal?”
I nodded.
“Well, I didn’t make our fortune, my father did. The trucking business made him a millionaire many, many times over. All I did was inherit the fortune. My father had to cheat and swindle a lot of people to make his money. All I had to do was be the dutiful son — get at least a B average at Yale and not do anything publicly excessive that would embarrass him — and I became a very wealthy man on the day he died, twelve years ago. If there are any family secrets they belong to my father, and he took them with him to his grave.”
“And you want to run for office?”
“As I said, I’m considering it. I think I’m what the state and the country need.”
“What’s that?”
“A conservative without an ideology. It’s frustrating being a conservative these days — you always have to sit next to some lunatic who wants creationism taught in public schools or something like that.”
“Think you have a chance?”
“I have the money, anyway. That’s a big part of the battle. I won’t have to depend on PACs.”
I looked at his ridiculously young face and his brilliant white hair and the quirky but stone-hard blue eyes. I didn’t trust him, didn’t believe anything he was telling me, but I didn’t know why. He just seemed dishonest.
“You’re going back to Des Moines?”
“Not right away. Thought I might stay here a few days and see what you find out.”
“Assuming I take the job.”
“Assuming you take the job. Of course.”
“I guess I’ll do it.”
“I’m very pleased.”
“But when I do find out anything concrete, I turn it over to the local police chief.”