He was asleep in ten seconds.
21
Valens had left Damon Kerry up at his mansion an hour ago and back at his hotel he paced as though he were caged. His suite at the Clift was bigger than some apartments he’d lived in and the wraparound view of San Francisco was expansive, but none of that mattered.
It was now near midnight of what had been the longest and one of the most difficult days of his life. The only thing that made it even remotely worthwhile was today’s latest poll that put Damon essentially dead even for Tuesday’s election. Technically he was still two points back, but with the pollster’s margin for error, the campaign was neck and neck.
Finally, the buzz came and he walked over, looked through the peephole, and pulled open the door.
Thorne cast a last quick look behind him at the hallway, then stepped into the room. ‘This is just not smart, Al,’ he said in his softest tone as he pushed the door closed, twisted the deadbolt, and connected the chain. Turning, he faced Valens, his expression betraying nothing – a bland smile, rheumy eyes. ‘This isn’t a good idea. We must not be seen together.’
Valens barely noticed the rebuke. He was too wound up. ‘It’s midnight, Baxter. Nobody’s looking, trust me. It’s just this…’ He spread his arms, the enormity of it. ‘… today.’
Thorne nodded understandingly. ‘The election’s in three days. This always happens. It’s nothing unusual. It might even get worse.’
‘I’m not talking about the election. Christ, the election is the good news. I’m talking about a dead man at the bottom of the Pulgas Water Temple and this attorney Hardy going to Bree’s place and…’
‘Wait, wait.’ Thorne held up a palm. ‘Why don’t we sit down? Do you have anything to drink? You could use a cocktail. In fact, a cocktail might be just the thing.’ He crossed the room to the bar, motioning for Valens to sit on one of the suite’s brocaded sofas. ‘This is really a remarkable room.’ He admired the view for a moment, then turned, asking as if it were an afterthought, ‘What does the dead man at the water temple have to do with us?’
The question was an instruction and a threat and it caught Valens flat-footed, no doubt as Thorne had intended. He went back to pulling soft-drink and single-serving liquor bottles from the bar area. ‘But speaking of cocktails, in the light of all the frenzy around this unfortunate MTBE poisoning, it occurred to me that the candidate could make an extremely dramatic presentation in the next day or two that might put him over the top to stay.’
He’d arranged the bottles and some glasses on a little tray and brought it over to Valens, placing it on the coffee table, then sitting on the couch kitty-corner. He reached for his inside pocket and extracted a flask.
‘What’s in that?’ Valens asked.
Thorne loved a surprise. For an answer, he smiled and unscrewed the cap, then poured a half inch of the clear liquid into one of the glasses. Picking it up, he smelled it, then passed it across the table. ‘You tell me.’
A sniff. ‘It’s alcohol.’
Another smile, this one beaming. ‘Yes it is. Absolutely right. It’s ethanol, straight up.’ Thorne popped the top on a bottle of orange soda and reached over pouring it into the glass. ‘Bottoms up, Al. Really.’
‘You want me to drink this?’
‘I think that’s the idea. Go on, it won’t hurt you.’
But Valens couldn’t seem to force himself to move. After a second or two, Thorne said, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ took the glass and drained it in a couple of swallows. ‘Since when have you been so timid, Al? Did you think I was going to poison you?’
‘No, of course not. I just…’ He met his employer’s eyes. ‘I don’t know, Baxter. I’m just fucking worn down.’
Thorne gave him an avuncular pat on the knee. ‘A couple more days and it’s over. You hang in there and it will all have been worth it. Now’ – back to business – ‘what do you think about my idea?’
‘I’m not sure exactly what it is. Make ethanol cocktails?’ Suddenly Thorne’s face showed some animation. ‘Actually, that might be even better. That’s just an inspired idea, Al. Really. Reporters will always take a free drink, won’t they?’ Valens felt some of his own tension break. ‘That’s been my experience.’
‘Exactly. You see, I was thinking of having Damon drink some ethanol – as I just did – at a press briefing. Think of the contrast…’ Thorne was getting wound up, although his voice never changed its inflection. ‘A few gallons of MTBE finds its way into the water supply and the whole city is shut down, the poisoned water smelling and tasting like turpentine.’ He paused briefly and held up his flask. ‘While the other additive, the natural additive, ethanol, is so safe you can drink it. In fact, people have been drinking it for ever. I love it,’ he said. ‘This could be very strong.’
But Valens wasn’t so sure. ‘If Damon will go for it.’
Thorne’s face clouded. ‘Why wouldn’t he?’
‘Because he’s careful, Baxter. He’s not an idiot. He’s never specifically endorsed ethanol. He’s just opposed to MTBE.’
‘Which if my logic hasn’t failed me leaves only ethanol.’
‘True.’ Valens hated Thorne’s attempts to micro-manage – he’d done a damn fine job with the campaign, and controlling the candidate, to date. He turned to reason. ‘But our strategy, you remember, has always been to let the voters make that leap, which they’re doing by themselves. This other is a little… overt, don’t you think?’
‘Sometimes you need overt.’ The voice was eider down; the tone was cold steel.
Here was Thorne’s defensiveness, which he’d seen often enough before. It was a signal to Valens that he’d better walk softly, because the truth was that Thorne frightened him badly. He wasn’t fooling Valens that he wasn’t behind this water poisoning.
Sometimes, though, such as today, people died.
‘I agree,’ Valens said. ‘Sometimes overt is good. So how about I ask Damon, and get his take on it? If he’ll go, we go.’
‘All right,’ Thorne said mildly, ‘since that’s our only option anyway.’ He was pouring a couple of the airline portions of vodka into his glass. He added an ice cube, topped it off with more orange soda, slid back more comfortably in his chair, and took a long drink. ‘Now, about this Hardy fellow. I’ve done some research. It turns out he may be a bit of a problem.’
This was not what Valens needed just now. He came forward to the first two inches of the couch. ‘How’s that?’
In his low-key way, Thorne outlined what he’d discovered about Frannie, the grand jury, Ron Beaumont, a little of Hardy’s history, and that he was a meddling lawyer who wasn’t always loath to get his hands dirty.
‘We can only assume,’ he concluded, ‘since he buttonholed Kerry, that he’s made the leap – no pun – from Bree’s death to gasoline additives, which is not good news for us. I do wish we could locate Ron.’ A sigh. ‘We should have acted more quickly, I’m afraid. I blame myself, really. I should have just hacked into her system and deleted the damn thing instead of-’
But Valens was shaking his head. He didn’t want to get into another discussion with Thorne about the ‘instead of.’ ‘No,’ he interrupted, ‘she would still have had the hard copy and probably a backup disk. That’s what I was trying to get her to give me, to hold her off until after the election.’
‘Come on in, Al. Thanks for coming by.’
He took in the incredible penthouse at a glance as he came through the door. He ‘d never been here before and the grandness of it surprised him, although maybe it shouldn ’t have – everything about Bree Beaumont made an impression. He was, he believed, largely immune to the attractive power of her physical presence but he wasn’t fool enough to deny its existence.