47. Mat #2
“This is a career-ender for DeMaris. If I leaked this to the right desk at the Times, or at ProPublica, or to anyone with half a fucking spine still left in journalism, then he’s done.
Indictments inside a month. A Senate ethics committee will roast him alive, then throw his carcass to the Bureau to finish the job. ”
I frown. “That all sounds pretty fucking good to me. Which part would I not want to hear?”
She turns on the stool to face me. Her eyes are red, like she hasn’t slept well in a long time, and I remember that she is also three months away from birthing a child into a world that contains men like Josiah DeMaris. “None of that gets Cass out of a cell.”
That knocks me stupid and silent.
“A public scandal isn’t a legal defense for her,” she goes on, more gently.
“Politically, he burns. But the GSR on her hand doesn’t disappear because a senator’s career does.
The prints on the weapon don’t lift themselves off the grip.
The D.A.’s case against her stands on its own forensic legs, and a smart prosecutor will argue it stands even taller now—because if Vainakh was real and Raymond was their guy, then of course Raymond’s wife had even more motive to want him dead. ”
I feel fucking sick. I was ready to celebrate. But Jillian’s right, of course. She’s sharp like that. I’m the one fumbling along in the darkness.
“You need a confession,” she concludes. “Or… you need a body that confesses for him.”
I close my eyes and think.
I’d known it, really. Jillian’s very good at her job, but I’m every bit as good as mine. I guess part of me just wanted to hear it in someone else’s voice. To have somebody outside my own head deliver the verdict, so I couldn’t pretend later that I’d talked myself into it.
That the killing wasn’t over.
The game has not yet finished.
She reaches over and touches the back of my hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be useful.” I tap the closed lid of the computer. “If I don’t make it through the next forty-eight hours, you find the right reporter and you burn this mudak’s life to the ground anyway. For Caroline. For Susan. For Bill. Whoever’s left.”
She looks at me for a long beat. Then she nods. “Alright. I can do that.”
As I wait for Afon to come pick me up from Jillian’s, I watch a couple stroll by. They’re holding hands and laughing, clearly besotted with each other. Nothing in their world is on fire. Their day will not end with a senator in a body bag.
I don’t envy them, not truly.
I just wonder, abstractly, what that’s like.
Soon, my uncle’s Mercedes turns the corner. He just glides to the curb and waits with that patient, undertaker’s stillness, the ever-present cigarette lit and bobbing at the corner of his mouth.
“You found something?” he asks as I fold myself into the passenger seat.
I give him a quick rundown. For once, his expression shifts from dead neutral to mildly surprised. I file that away for future reference: It only takes a vast conspiracy involving a United States senator and a murderous Eastern European criminal syndicate to get a rise out of Uncle Afon.
Good to know the bar is low.
He whistles, low. “Senator DeMaris. Tvoyu mat’. ”
He doesn’t ask the obvious questions. He’ll get there.
For now, he keeps glancing over at me as he drives.
I run my thumb along the rib that’s been chewing on me since the bank.
The pain is starting to feel less like a ghost and more like a passenger, a rude son of a bitch that puts its feet on the dash and won’t shut up.
“It’s killing you to leave her in there, eh?”
I don’t bother answering.
He nods knowingly. “Yeah. I get it.”
Clamping down my molars, I look over at him. “I just want her to know I didn’t fucking abandon her. The whole world, you included, tried to push me into it, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I still won’t.”
“I won’t lecture you, nephew,” sighs Afon.
“You’re too old and too smart for that. But I’ll remind you that these are not corner thugs we’re dealing with here.
These are men with resources. Say you want her out, consequences be damned.
You walk into that visitor’s room, you put your face in front of that glass—and then what happens?
Josiah surely has eyes in that building.
The minute he sees you go to her, he knows she matters. And if he knows she matters, then?—”
“Don’t.”
But he does anyway. “—then he finds a nurse in the infirmary who needs to put a child through college or an inmate whose cousin owes a debt. He finds a syringe with the wrong thing in it, or a toothbrush with a sharpened handle, and your woman gets an unfortunate little prick. There is an endless supply of all of those things in there. Endless. You know this.”
I do know it. That’s the part that’s wrecking me.
“Listen to me, nephew: She is safer in there hating you than out here loving you.”
I look out of the window. We’re crawling east on Houston. A delivery guy on an e-bike weaves around a double-parked van, middle finger raised at no one.
I glance back at Afon. “Give me one of those.”
Afon’s eyebrow climbs. “ Plemyannik , now is not the time to start bad habits.”
“Give me a fucking cigarette, Afon.”
He shakes one out of the pack and hands it over, along with the lighter. My second cigarette in two days. My second cigarette in my life. I cup the flame and breathe in.
I love you, I think. I love both of you. I’m not gone; I’m running toward you. I’m just taking the long way there.
I crack the window and flick the half-spent cigarette out. It sparks once on the asphalt and is gone.
We’ve got two days left to frame a senator.
Let’s hope it’s enough.