And sure enough, that’s what the study – draft written by Bree Beaumont, Ph.D. – had found. Gasoline wasn’t burning cleanly enough. It needed an ‘additive’ to burn more completely away the hydrocarbons that contributed to smog. The California legislature and the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency fell all over themselves passing laws that mandated the use of this magical additive, if a good one could only be found.
Valens had to admit Kerry was good at this next part. He’d heard it from dozens of podiums up and down the state and it always played beautifully, the great American public hating rich corporations as it did.
‘So guess what these noble oil companies did? They spent lots and lots of their own money developing the very additive that their own gasoline needed to become clean and efficient – our old friend MTBE.’ Here, Valens was pleased to note, there was often if not always a chorus of well-orchestrated ‘boos.’
After which Kerry would continue: ‘And then, as it turned out – just a coincidence, my friends, I assure you – it turned out that the oil companies found that their production of MTBE, made of a by-product of gasoline refining that they had earlier been throwing away – well, would you look at that? Here’s a surprise! MTBE started to bring in a yearly income of three billion dollars!’
More boos.
‘Oh, and darn, they forgot to tell us one last little detail.’ A moment of suspense. ‘Wouldn’t you just know it? The dang stuff causes cancer and respiratory degeneration. Actually, the oil companies didn’t really forget to tell us that. What they did was tell us the opposite – that MTBE was nearly medicinal in its impact on human health. The air so much cleaner we’d have a new Eden. Why, read the initial reports’ – again, drafts by Bree – ’and you’d almost come away believing it’s so safe you could drink the stuff.
‘Except for one other problem.’ And here Kerry would turn his most serious. ‘Except it makes water taste like turpentine. It leaks out of holding tanks and jet ski engines and everywhere else liquids leak out of. And once it gets into the groundwater, the wells and waterways of our great state, it never comes out. Never. Ever. It doesn’t evaporate. It doesn’t break down chemically. Ask the city of Santa Monica, which had to shut down five of its wells – that’s half of its water supply – because of MTBE contamination from local corner gas stations.
‘And even now, ladies and gentleman, even today as I’m talking to you, this stuff is added to every gallon of gasoline sold in California at a rate of up to fifteen per cent per gallon. That’s fourteen point two million gallons of MTBE every single day.’
This statistic usually stunned the crowd into silence.
The candidate would wait as long as it he could, then hang his head a moment. His timing was excellent. He’d look up, sometimes even able to summon a tear. ‘It can’t go on. For our children and our future, it’s got to be stopped. My name is Damon Kerry and I’m here to stop it.’
‘So, bottom-line, we can’t comment about Ron and Bree. We have to stick to the issues. We’ve been through this all before, Damon. It’s only a couple more days.’
‘I know, but…’
But Valens knew there couldn’t be any ‘buts.’ ‘Listen,’ he said with intensity. ‘Every day in every major city in this state, the callers to these shows are spreading the word that the oil companies killed Bree to punish her for betraying them – changing her mind and campaigning against MTBE because she changed camps and came over to your side.’ Valens stopped any reply, a hand up. ‘Look, Damon, here’s what I’m saying. You know it as well as I do – people love conspiracies, they love to hate these oil guys. This helps you.’
‘But I’m not accusing the oil companies of-’
‘And that what’s makes it so brilliant!’ Valens knew that his candidate could see this clearly, so why did he have to keep explaining it? ‘Damon, you’re Mr Clean. But your worthy opponent, who favors pumping MTBE until more research can be done? Guess what? He looks like he’s with the oil interests-’
‘Which he is.’
Lord! Valens couldn’t get over Kerry’s fascination with the literal truth. ‘Yes, of course he is, but what matters for you is that we couldn’t buy the radio time they’re giving us. If we get them thinking about Ron Beaumont as a villain, it all gets diluted.’
‘I don’t know, Al. I wish they would come up with some villain, some suspect. Somebody to take the heat off.’
‘Take the heat off who?’
‘Who do you think, Al? Me.’
‘What about you?’
‘And Bree.’
‘You had a professional relationship. What’s to talk?’
Kerry gave him a look. ‘This would be a bad time for somebody to find out, though, wouldn’t it? She’s back in the news, the story’s no longer dead, reporters start digging.’
‘And find nothing. Do you hear me? You have to relax. They find nothing.’
The limo had pulled to a stop. Kerry hated to keep his crowd waiting. He needed to get out and press the flesh, keep connected to his voters. He reached for the door handle. ‘All right, Al, I hear you. I hear you.’
13
Abe Glitsky lay awake, trying to ignore the television noise in the next room. His housekeeper/nanny Rita loved the TV as much as Glitsky hated it. She’d been living with them now for almost five years and was a treasure, especially with Orel. Abe needed her so badly he knew he would tolerate much worse in her than an unfortunate taste for popular dreck.
Still, tonight, with Frannie Hardy in jail and an unsolved high-profile murder starting to get renewed media attention, the inanities soothed like a buzz saw. Finally, he pulled off the covers and sat up.
Five minutes later, fully dressed, he was out of the house, walking down Lake Street on his way to where he’d parked his city-issue car about six blocks away – the closest parking space he could find.
He was telling himself that maybe it wasn’t the television after all. What had gotten him up and moving was the sudden bolt that Frannie and his unsolved, high-profile murder were one and the same case. Not that he hadn’t known it before, but he’d been viewing them as more or less separate problems, and suddenly it struck him that maybe they weren’t.
One other thing was certain – he hadn’t woken her up. From the looks of her eyes, she hadn’t slept yet in her cell.
‘Abe. Hi…?’ A quick look around the walls of the interview room although there was no place anybody could hide. Glass block and light-green stucco. The question was all over her face – where was her husband? What was Abe doing here by himself in the middle of the night?
The door closed behind her and she took a little half-step hop, jumping out of the way of something, the sound. Then a pitiful smile, embarrassed. ‘I’m not good at this.’
Abe was standing close. ‘Who is?’ He came up and put his arms around her for a second. She felt almost dangerously insubstantial, all tiny bones. He pulled back and looked at her, swimming in the orange jail jumpsuit. ‘Are you eating?’
She shrugged, no answer. ‘Is Dismas coming in? Is he out there?’
‘No, it’s just me, checking on how you’re holding up.’
Frannie crossed her arms, the ghost of her old self trying to appear, a dance in her eyes. ‘No, checking on how I’m holding up was last time, before you went home. This is something else.’
The scar stretched between Glitsky’s lips. His own beaming smile. His head bobbed appreciatively. ‘You should be the lawyer.’
‘I’ll pass, thanks.’ Boosting herself on to the table, she looked up at him. ‘So what is it? The deal?’
Glitsky’s brow furrowed. ‘What deal?’
‘It’s not that? I thought they must have come and asked you-’