“Editors are always like that.”
“Yours?”
She stared at her drink. “I’m a free woman at the moment.” She took a sip. “We had a disagreement about this story. So I split.”
There was nothing to say.
She put the drink down. “Typical tourist-hotel drink. It’s hard to taste the gin for the ice.”
“Persevere.” He raised his glass. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” Her response was listless. “Nearly a week down here and I still haven’t got to first base.” For a moment, she felt weakened by an easy self-pity. She decided to shrug it off. “To hell with it. What did you do in the Middle East? Besides Iran, I mean?”
“Whatever came up. Israel is always a story, even the politics of it. And the Sinai transfer. And once I got down to Ethiopia to see if there were really Cubans there.”
“And?”
“Sí.”
She laughed aloud. Her laugh was natural, low and rather whimsical, as though it always came unexpectedly to her but was made welcome in any case.
“It sounds like fun,” she said. “God, that’s what I want to do in my next life. Foreign correspondent. I even have a trench coat.”
“Some of it was fun. But you know what it really is — most of it is just airports and waiting around.”
Devereaux appraised Rita, sitting comfortably beside him now. She wore earrings and a light blue sweater with a plain round collar. Her only makeup was lipstick; her whole casual manner carried a certain brash elegance that pleased him. He felt warmed suddenly to be in her company.
She said, “I never thought I’d have the patience to be a reporter. I hate to wait. I hate lines and standing around. Maybe I should have gotten into a different end of it.”
“Like television?”
“I’d have to be too beautiful for that. I couldn’t stand it.”
“Everyone on TV isn’t beautiful.”
“I don’t think they’re ready for a female Walter Cronkite, and even he’s retired. I mean, if you’re a woman, you can’t allow yourself the luxury of wrinkles or growing old or having gray hair.”
He didn’t speak.
She smiled at him, sipped more of her drink, and put it down on the bar. She crossed her legs. She wore no stockings beneath the tan skirt. One sandal dangled from her toes as she swung it back and forth.
“What’s the Tunney story going to be?”
She just looked at him for a moment. “I don’t know. That’s the surprise. But there has to be something there.”
“Why?”
“Because the CIA put him in a box for a week. And because when things got too hot for them in Washington, they shoved him down here and now the priests have put him in a bigger box. But it’s still a box.”
Devereaux was startled but he made no gesture. He waited a moment for his voice to find a calm range. “A box?”
“That’s CIA slang. For when they put you in isolation — that’s what they call it in the official reports, ‘isolation.’ But when they talk about it, they call it a box.”
“You know CIA people?”
“Some. Not enough. I get information from them, and there’s the Freedom of Information Act reports I get out.”
“Well, what do you think they want from him?”
“Who?”
“Tunney.”
Darkness had gathered while they spoke. The sun was gone, the steel band players had moved inside, those on the patio were starting to drift into the hotel to dress for dinner. It was still warm and humid and the opaqueness of the night made the heat thick and uncomfortable. The swarthy old man stood up and beckoned the young woman in the white bathing suit and robe. She rose and was much taller than he, but she seemed fragile next to him, as though she were a child.
“I don’t know. But it’s worth it to me. And if I don’t find out, I go back to Green Bay and try to get my old job back on the Press-Gazette.”
“You really burned your bridges with your boss?”
“Kaiser? Yes. That’s his name. Yes.” She seemed suddenly full of regret. “Yes. I think we got rid of each other.” She smiled as though she didn’t mean the smile.
“You liked him.”
It was not a question. Rita stared at him, annoyed.
“Yeah.”
The woman behind the bar began to close up, banging down the awnings and locking them.
“Yeah.” She stared down at her hand tracing a circle in the wetness on the bar top. “You either like someone you work with or you hate him.”
“Why did you fight?”
“He didn’t want me to go after this story.”
“Why was it important? I mean, to do it?”
“My reasons. It’s a good story.”
“Yes.”
“But there are other reasons. I guess I’m a little crazy on the subject.”
He waited for her. The silence between them seemed to press on her. Rita had to explain herself.
“My father,” she began.
He stared at her, his cold gray eyes not moving from her face that was turned half away from him. Her profile was fine-boned, stubborn from chin to nose. Only her eyes were soft, wondering, as though still believing in miracles that the rest of her face had learned to scoff at.
“My father was in the State Department. A long time ago, in the forties. You remember about the witch hunt? McCarthy?”
“Communists in the State Department.”
“There were communists but he didn’t know it,” she said. Her voice had become cold, flat in its precise clipping of the words.
“I don’t have to tell you everything,” she said. “But they forced him out. I mean, he wasn’t a communist but there were… well.” She paused. “He didn’t let himself become bitter. He always said…” She looked at him; could she tell him?
“He always said that this was the greatest country in the world. Do you think that’s funny?”
Devereaux saw the test offered by a woman who had allowed herself to be temporarily defenseless. He avoided it without a sound, with only a slow shake of his head. As she had intended him to do.
“He was that way. All his life. He said McCarthy was a mistake. He even went back to Wisconsin to live, the state McCarthy came from.”
“What would this have to do with Tunney?”
“My father,” she said, not speaking to him, not looking at him. “And my brother. Both of them. I couldn’t…” Again, she came to the edge of words and there was only unmarked forest ahead. She seemed confused for a second and then turned back. Devereaux knew she would not be able to say any more.
“It’s just your story,” he prodded gently.
“Yes. That’s part of it. It’s my story. It’s there and it’s mine and I’ve got to know about him, why he came out.” She said it in a dogged tone, like a child explaining ownership of a prized toy to an adult who cannot be expected to understand.
Devereaux smiled at her again.
This time, it was not for effect. Something in her manner was honest and direct, like a handshake between partners. It was a quality he rarely came into contact with anymore.
“I hope it’s worth it,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“Bar’s closed,” said the woman unfolding the wooden awnings and letting them drop with a bang against the bar top. “Bar inside the hotel.”
“Florida charm,” Devereaux said.
Rita laughed. “I’ve got to be going.”
“Let me buy you dinner.”
She glanced up at him sharply.
He smiled. “From one reporter to another.”
“No.” She put down her glass, unfolded her legs and stood up. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Not here. There’s a good seafood place called Fisherman’s Wharf down at the end of the key, near the bridge. Really fine, a group of Albanians from Chicago run it.”