“I always thought he had something to do with it,” Hal said. “My parents would never hear that, neither one of them. My father kept telling us, ‘This is as big a tragedy for the Gianises as it is for us,’ and my mother, especially after my dad died, she just hated discussing the entire thing. And I kept quiet for their sakes. But they’re gone now and I’m speaking my mind. I think I’m actually going to run ads.” Hal nodded decisively. Evon was beginning to recognize that none of Hal’s remarks, here or back in the corridor, were completely spontaneous. He had been considering making a scene, and the potential aftermath, when he’d arrived today.
“That’ll only force him into court,” Tooley said. “You go that route, big fella, you gotta have some proof.”
“Evon will find the evidence.”
“Me?” She couldn’t contain herself. But she had spent three years now extracting Hal from the holes he blundered into.
“Call Tim,” Hal said.
“Tim?” asked Evon. Hal was referring to the PI he’d had tailing Corus Dykstra from YourHouse the day before.
“Tim knows all about this case,” said Hal. “He never thought we had the whole story. I bet he already has plenty of dope on Paul.”
They had reached the ZP Building, and Hal, who had a conference call on the YourHouse acquisition, hopped out so he could get upstairs to his office on the fortieth floor. But he stuck his head back into the car for one second to hand over a slip of paper.
“That’s Tim’s cell. Find him. He’ll help.”
3
Raymond Horgan’s generosity had been a fair wind at Paul Gianis’s back throughout his career. Stan Sennett, Ray’s former chief deputy, who was Paul’s second cousin, had gotten Paul his first interview with Ray in 1982, and they had clicked from the start. After Dita’s murder, Ray had held Paul’s job offer open while Paul worked with Sandy Stern on his brother’s defense, and that didn’t change even after Cass pled. Ray said he’d always taught his deputies to ask of any decision, ‘Would you think you were being fair, if the defendant was your brother?’ He doubted Paul would ever need that reminder.
In 1986, Ray lost the primary to his former deputy, Nico Della Guardia, and Paul left soon after to become a plaintiff’s lawyer. Even out of office, however, Ray continued to be a leading figure in the Democratic Farmers amp; Union Party. Horgan had helped guide Paul when he decided to turn to politics a decade ago, after two huge tort judgments, especially the tobacco litigation, basically made work a pastime for him. It was Ray who’d first introduced Paul to local labor leaders, and Ray who, four years ago, twisted the last two arms to secure the votes Paul needed as a reform candidate to become majority leader in the senate. Now Ray was general counsel to Paul’s mayoral campaign.
“Not mere falsity. But reckless disregard for the truth,” said Ray, reciting the standard of proof a public figure like Paul had to offer to win a suit for defamation. In his mid-seventies, Horgan was so red-faced beneath the frost of white hair that you couldn’t quite suppress the thought of a peppermint stick. He was hobbled after two knee replacements, and no longer even pretended that he could recall names. Some dismissed Horgan as a barnaclized pol. But he’d retained his canniness and an air of pure delight in the sly mechanics of power.
“And can we prove that?” Paul asked him.
“Should be a slam dunk,” said Ray. “What evidence do they have that you had any role in that murder?”
On the other side of the sleek conference table, Mark Crully, Paul’s campaign manager, dropped his pencil.
“We have to sue,” Crully said. Mark was a quiet, driven little guy, general of the backroom army you would never see on TV. He’d run campaigns all over the country for a decade, most recently winning a special election for a congressional seat in California that had been Republican for fifty years. He was good. But about one thing: winning. And he was testy now. He had no patience for lawyers. Or anyone else for that matter. “We have to sue,” he repeated.
Paul decided to ignore Crully, who often seemed to have his own view of who worked for whom. Paul spoke to Horgan.
“But it’ll be our burden to show I had nothing to do with that murder, won’t it? It’s always a bitch proving a negative. And it’s not like we can do DNA on the blood at the scene. We’re identical twins.”
“True,” said Ray. “But we’ll get discovery. And the discovery will show Hal has nothing. Right?”
The three were sitting in the fishbowl conference room at the center of Paul’s campaign offices, glass walls on two sides. The design was Crully’s. He believed that a look of openness sent the right message, both to the campaign workers and to the press, on the limited occasions Crully admitted them. But Paul, who was accustomed to keeping his own secrets, couldn’t get used to it.
Looking through the glass to the tumbling office outside, you’d think this was a campaign with no troubles. There were probably one hundred people at work at 10 a.m., all but roughly twenty of them volunteers, hustling about with purpose. The space belonged to a guy Paul had known since law school, Max Florence, who’d donated two floors. They’d bought white modular panels with big windows, and had the entire office up and running the day Paul announced. It demonstrated formidability to his half-dozen opponents.
A full half of the office was given over to fund-raising. Most of the volunteers here were at the phone bank, dialing for dollars, from the lists Paul had developed in four different campaigns. Field, the second of the three major campaign operations, was situated right across from where they sat. Jean Orange was laughing about something with her two deputies; her metal walls were covered with maps of the county, green tags showing where they had opened local offices, red tags indicating the wards where the committeeperson or councilman had promised to help. Now that the holidays were over, she expected to have a thousand people hitting doors this weekend, identifying their voters. Communications, around the corner, was the place today where people were earning their keep. Tom Mileie, a thirty-two-year-old Internet expert, and his three staffers, not to mention both deputy campaign managers and the policy director, were all fielding calls from reporters who wanted to know what Paul had to say now that Hal Kronon had claimed again that Paul had helped murder Dita.
Crully interrupted once more.
“You have to sue this cracker. You gave him a day to calm down. We sent him a letter saying cut it out, and not only did he not cut it out, he repeated it to reporters this morning. So now we have to sue him.”
Paul had been in public life long enough that he didn’t get spooked by crises. They were, truth be told, part of the thrill. People were counting on you. Now figure it out. And he would. He always did.
“Hal’s emotional,” Paul said. “People understand he’s emotional. If I sue him, I’m giving him a platform to keep this in the news. Our last poll said we’re twenty up. With that kind of lead, you play house odds and don’t gamble.”
“This guy doesn’t need a platform,” Crully answered. “He’s got a billion dollars.” Crully wore a white shirt that seemed bright as a headlight, with the cuffs still linked, and a rep tie snug to the collar. Everybody else, except the Communications people who often had to put on a tie for the cameras, worked in jeans. But Crully preferred to demonstrate he was still a marine. He spoke in a low voice and tried to show no emotion as he rolled that fucking pencil in his fingers. In Paul’s experience, the Crullys of the world came with two speeds. When he went home to Pennsylvania he probably spent two days crying over his mother’s grave, and seething about what a drunken lout his dad had been, and hating his brothers. And then he returned to work with the bloodless air of a hit man. “And there’s another problem.” Mark pointed his pencil at Ray, as a cue.