“Then why race to him like a battered wife back to her abuser?”
“What’re my other choices, Rogo? Go to the FBI, where O’Shea works? Or the Service, where The Roman is? Or better yet, I can go to the local authorities and tell them I saw dead man walking. Ten minutes after that happens, you think O’Shea and his little posse won’t show up with their federal badges, take me into private custody, and put a bullet in the back of my head claiming I was trying to escape?”
“That’s not even—”
“It is true and you know it’s true, Rogo! These guys went after one of the most powerful men in the White House at a stadium filled with 200,000 people. You think they won’t slice my neck open on some deserted road in Palm Beach?”
“Tell him not to mention my name to Manning,” Dreidel calls out in the background.
“Dreidel wants you to—”
“I heard him,” I interrupt, twisting the steering wheel into a sharp left on Via Las Brisas. As I curve around a well-manicured divider, the street narrows, and the privacy hedges rise, stretching as tall as twenty feet and blocking my view of all the multimillion-dollar homes hidden behind them. “Rogo, I know you don’t agree, but for the past two days, the only reason I stayed away from Manning is because O’Shea and Micah convinced me to. D’you understand? The man’s been by my side for eight years, and the only reason I doubted him is because they—two strangers with badges—told me to. No offense, but after all our time together, Manning deserves better than that.”
“That’s fine, Wes, but let’s be clear about one thing: Manning hasn’t been by your side for eight years. You’ve been by his.”
I shake my head and pull up to the last house on my right. For security reasons, they don’t allow parking in the driveway, so I head for the shoulder of the grassy divider and park directly behind a navy-blue rental car that’s already there. His guests are early — which means, as I hop out and rush across the street, I’m officially late.
Even before I stop at the ten-foot-high, double-planked wooden fence, the intercom that’s hidden in the shrubs crackles. “Can I help you?” a deep voice asks.
“Hey there, Ray,” I call out to the agent on duty. “It’s Wes.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Rogo pleads through my phone.
He’s never been more wrong. This is exactly what I need to do. Not for Manning. For me. I need to know.
A metallic thunk unlocks the wooden gate, which slowly yawns open.
“Wes, at least just wait until we get through Boyle’s personnel file,” Rogo begs.
“You’ve been searching for four hours already — it’s enough. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
“Don’t be so stubborn.”
“Good-bye, Rogo,” I say, hanging up the phone. It’s so easy for someone outside the ring to tell a fighter how to fight his fight. But this is my fight. I just never realized it.
As I walk up the driveway, there’s no house number on the front door, and no mailbox to identify the occupants. But the four suit-and-tie Secret Service agents standing outside the garage are quite a giveaway. With Nico on the loose, they kept Manning at home. Fortunately, as I lift my chin and stare up at the pale blue British Colonial, I know where the former President lives.
73
And how’d you meet him again?” Lisbeth asked, holding her cell phone with one hand and taking notes with the other.
“Mutual friend,” Violet replied, her voice already shaking. “It was years ago. At that point on the job, it was personal introductions only.”
“Introductions?”
“You have to understand, with a man like him, you don’t just walk up and swing your tail. In this town — with all the money… with everything these guys have to lose — the only thing they care about is discretion, okay? That’s why they sent him to me.”
“Of course,” Lisbeth said as she scribbled the word Hooker in her notepad. “So you were…”
“I was twenty, is what I was,” Violet said with a verbal shove. She didn’t like being judged. “But lucky me, I could keep a secret. That’s why I got the work. And with him… our first two appointments, I didn’t even say his name. That alone guaranteed he’d invite me back. Gladiators need to conquer, right?” she asked, her laughter soft and hollow.
Lisbeth didn’t laugh back. There was no pleasure in someone else’s pain.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Violet added, “but it was nice in the beginning. He was, honestly… he was tender — always asking if I was okay… he knew my mother was sick, so he’d ask about her. I know, I know — he’s a politician, but I was twenty and he was…” Her voice trailed off.
Lisbeth didn’t say anything. But as the silence wore on… “Violet, are you—?”
“It sounds so damn stupid, but I was just thrilled he liked me,” she blurted, clearly trying to stifle a sob. From the sound of it, the flush of emotion surprised even her. “I’m sorry — let me just… I’m sorry…”
“You have no reason to be sorry.”
“I know — I just… it mattered that he liked me… that he kept coming back,” she explained, sniffling it all back in. “I wouldn’t see him for a while, then the phone would ring, and I’d be jumping up and down, like I’d been asked to the prom. And that’s how it was until… until he left one night and I didn’t hear from him for almost three months. I was… to be honest, at first, I was worried. Maybe I did something wrong. Or he was mad. And then, when I heard he was in town, I did the one thing I never should’ve done — the dumbest thing I could possibly do, against every rule,” Violet explained, her voice barely a whisper. “I called him.”
Right then Lisbeth stopped writing.
“He was at my place in ten minutes,” Violet said, another sob clogging her throat. “Wh-When I opened the door, he stepped inside without a word… made sure he was out of view… and then he just — I swear to you, he never did it before…”
“Violet, it’s okay to—”
“I didn’t even see the first punch coming,” she said as the tears flooded forward. “He just kept screaming at me, ‘How dare you! How dare you!’ I tried fighting back — I did… I’m… I’ve never been weak — but he grabbed the back of my hair and he… he sent me straight for… there was a mirror above my dresser.”
Staring at her own rounded reflection in her computer screen, Lisbeth didn’t move.
“I could see him behind me in the mirror… just as I hit it… I could see him behind me… his face… the red in his eyes. It was like he pulled off a mask and let out… like he freed something underneath,” Violet cried. “And — and — and when he was gone… when the door slammed and the blood was pouring from my nose, I still — I know it’s — can you believe I still missed him?” she asked, weeping uncontrollably. “I–I mean, could I possibly be more pathetic than that?”
Lisbeth shook her head to herself, trying hard to stay focused. “Violet, I know this is hard for you — I know what it takes to tell the story — but I just need— Before we do anything, I need to ask: Do you have any way of proving this… anything at all… videotapes, physical proof…?”
“You don’t believe me,” she insisted.
“No, no, no… it’s just, look who you’re fighting with here. Without a way of verifying—”
“I have proof,” Violet said, clearly annoyed as she caught her breath. “I’ve got it right here. If you don’t believe me, come get it.”