“Take a few days off and think this over. You spent three years in law school and three years in practice. That’s six years of your life.”
“No. I know you’re doing what you think is right. But I don’t think it’s right. I don’t want to think it’s right.”
“Judith—”
“No, Mr. Liarakos. I’m not going to squander another minute of my life arguing about a dope dealer’s constitutional rights. I’m not going to touch another dollar earned by helping a dope dealer escape justice. No.”
This time when she left he didn’t go after her.
He sat in his chair and stared at the transcripts.
A ball glove wrapped around a scruffy baseball lay on the credenza. He pulled on the glove and tossed the ball into it. The impact of the ball meeting the leather made a satisfying “thock” which tingled his hand. The thumb of the glove was sweat stained. He had habitually raked it across his forehead to wipe away the perspiration. He did that now, enjoying the cool smoothness of the leather, then placed the glove back on the polished mahogany.
He kept a bottle of old scotch in the bottom drawer of his desk. He got it out and poured a shot into an empty coffee cup.
He was pouring a second when the phone rang.
“Yes.”
“There’s a lady on the phone calling from California. She won’t give her name. Says it’s a personal matter.”
“My wife?”
“No, sir. I know her voice.”
“I’ll take the call.”
The phone clicked.
“Hello,” he said. “This is Thanos Liarakos.”
“Mr. Liarakos, this is Karen Allison with the California Clinic?”
“Yes.”
“Your wife apparently left the clinic during the night, Mr. Liarakos. We can’t find her on the grounds. She took her suitcase with her.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Liarakos. We did what we could.”
“Yes,” he said, and gently cradled the telephone.
On Friday morning Henry Charon drove to Baltimore to find a pay telephone. He parked at a mall and located a bank of three phones near the men’s room. Since he was early, he ate lunch in the food court, lingered over coffee, then strolled the mall from end to end. Finally, with five minutes to go, he walked to the pay phones and waited. A woman was busy explaining to her husband why the new sheets on sale were a bargain. She hung up a minute before the hour and walked away briskly, apparently the winner of the budget battle. She had glanced at Charon once, for no more than a second, and had not looked at him again.
Charon dialed. The number he was calling, according to Tassone, was a pay phone in Pittsburgh. The area code—412—was right, anyway. Charon had checked. When the operator came on the line he fed in quarters from a ten-dollar roll.
Tassone answered on the second ring. “Yes.”
“You got my shipment?”
“Yes. Where and when?”
“Truck stop at Breezewood, Pennsylvania. Tomorrow at three.”
“Got it.” The connection broke.
Charon walked out of the mall and got in the car. Before he started it he carefully studied a map, then folded it neatly and stuck it above the visor.
Four hours later in Philadelphia he bought a ticket for tomorrow’s seven-fourteen bus to Pittsburgh. He ate dinner in a fast-food restaurant, then drove around north Philly until he found a cheap motel, where he paid cash.
He was up at five a.m. He parked the car at a twenty-four-hour garage a half block from the bus station and was in the waiting room thirty minutes early.
The bus left right on the minute. Charon’s luggage consisted only of a backpack, which rested on the seat beside him. There were eleven passengers. Charon sat near the back of the bus where the driver couldn’t see him in his mirror.
Two seats forward, on the other side of the aisle, sat a couple that lit a marijuana cigarette thirty minutes into the trip, just after the bus had reached cruising speed on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The odor was sickly sweet and heavy. Charon cracked his window and waited for the driver to see the obvious smoke cloud and stop the bus. The bus never stopped. After a second cigarette the man and woman drifted off to sleep.
Henry Charon watched the countryside pass and wondered what it would be like to hunt it.
Four people got off the bus at Harrisburg and three got on. The couple across the aisle lit more marijuana. One of the new passengers cursed, which drew laughter from the smokers. The bus driver ignored the whole affair.
The driver pulled into the bus parking area at the Breezewood truck stop a little after noon. He announced a thirty-minute lunch stop, then darted down the stairs and headed for the restaurant. Most of the passengers trailed after him.
Taking his backpack, Henry Charon went to the men’s room in the truckers’ section of the building. He found a stall, dropped his trousers, and settled in. When he came out an hour later the bus was gone.
Charon bought a newspaper, then went into the restaurant and asked for a menu and a booth by the windows.
Senator Bob Cherry had the reputation of being an old-time politician. Now in his early seventies, he had been a U.S. naval aviator during World War II and had shot down seven Japanese planes. After the war and law school, Bob Cherry had gone into politics. He had served four years in the Florida legislature, four years in the United States House of Representatives, and then run for the Senate. He had been there ever since.
Tall, gaunt, with piercing eyes and a gravel voice, he mastered the rules of the world’s most exclusive gentlemen’s club and set out to make it his own. He had. He had passed up chances to run for majority leader and whip: he preferred to lend his support to others, more ambitious than he and perhaps less wise, and use his influence to dictate who sat on the various committees that accomplished the work of the Senate. As chairman of the Government Oversight Committee and patron of the party leaders the power he wielded was enormous. Cabinet officers invited him to breakfast, presidents invited him to lunch, and every socialite in Washington invited him to dinner. When Bob Cherry wanted something, he usually got it.
His wife had died ten years ago, and ever since he had had a succession of tall, shapely secretaries. Each lasted about two years. His current helper was approximately twenty-six and was a former Miss Georgia.
Today, at lunch, T. Jefferson Brody had trouble keeping his eyes off her. He wasn’t trying very hard. He knew Bob Cherry well enough to know that the old goat got a kick out of younger men drooling down the cleavage of the sweet piece who was screwing him afternoon and night. So T. Jefferson Brody, diplomat that he was, ogled Miss Tina Jordan appreciatively. When she walked across the dining room on her way to the ladies’, he made a point of admiring her shapely ass as it swayed deliciously from side to side.
Brody sighed wistfully. “She’s something else.”
“That she is,” Bob Cherry agreed with a tight grin. “What’s on your mind, Jefferson?”
Brody took a check from his inside jacket pocket and passed it to the senator. It was for five thousand dollars. “A donation to your voter-registration PAC.”
Cherry stared at the check. “The FM Development Corporation. Never heard of ’em.”
“They’re nationwide. Build shopping centers and stuff all over. They’ve contributed to your PAC before.”
“Oh. Forgot. And they say the memory is the first thing to go.” Cherry folded the check and slipped it into a pocket. “Well, thank you and FM Development. Any donation on behalf of good government is deeply appreciated.”
“What’s the government going to do about foreign aid to Russia?”
Cherry took a sip of his wine, then said, “Probably arrange tax credits for corporations that do joint ventures with the Soviets. Something like that. American business could teach the Russians a lot, provide capital, management expertise, inventory control, and so on. Our companies wouldn’t have to make much of a profit, if any, with tax credits as an incentive. It might work pretty well.” He went on, detailing some of the proposals.