I took the train downtown that evening because I didn’t want to fight traffic and because I figured that I’d be going no place after dinner except home, alone.
Amanda was already at the Italian Village, upstairs and in front, where everyone passing by would notice her. Her two security guards loomed at the table across the aisle. They had napkins tucked into collars where necks should have been and wore excited smiles on their faces. I gave them a nod as I sat down across from Amanda.
‘You’re making a statement?’ I asked, gesturing vaguely at the crush of diners surrounding us.
‘We don’t need to slink around.’
‘With your business prominence and ties to Wade, slinking when with me might be wise.’
‘Tell me again about your meeting with Tim.’
‘Why are you so persistent about this, Amanda?’
‘Tell me.’
‘As I said, he seemed straightforward. He admitted to being good pals with Shea, Piser and Halvorson twenty years ago, and claims he was shocked when all three suddenly quit the Bean campaign. He said that other than a preprinted card every Christmas from Halvorson, he’d heard from none of them until Marilyn Paul intercepted a shakedown call from Shea. She told the campaign’s security man about it, who told Wade. Wade said he had no idea what Shea supposedly had on him, and so neither of them ever responded to Shea. The security man backed Wade on everything, saying as far as they were concerned the matter ended when Shea, passing as Arlin, got blown up in Laguna Beach. The security man called me later on, said he’d asked Theresa Wade if perhaps he shouldn’t look into the Marilyn Paul killing a little more, just to make sure there was nothing that could adversely affect the campaign. She told him to drop it, and for him to tell me to drop it, too.’
‘Theresa Wade,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘You’re sure you didn’t tell Jeffries that it wasn’t Shea in the rubble?’
‘No, only to call Laguna Beach. Beech confirmed that he had. I don’t know what they discussed. Now there’s a new problem. Jenny Galecki.’
Her face tightened.
‘As we learned in Reeder, she’s chasing this story—’
‘Because you told her about it in San Francisco,’ she interrupted.
‘And later, when I told her of a possible connection to Timothy Wade. She flew to Tucson and talked to Halvorson’s landlord. She found no trace of Halvorson ever having lived there. The landlord said Halvorson rented the place over the phone, sent in a generous check to secure the deal and didn’t bother the landlord for twenty years.’
‘The ideal tenant.’
‘Or a beard.’
‘Someone else rented the place to establish a presence?’
‘Someone wealthy enough to maintain the ruse for twenty years,’ I said.
The waitress came. Amanda told her to take the two guards’ orders first, and then she ordered spaghetti with marinara. I ordered lasagna. Both of us needed time to think, so we hid behind talk of the electric utility she’d inherited. Our food came and we kept talking about electricity, with occasional glances at the guards across the narrow aisle. They’d ordered a platter large enough to feed an extended Italian family of first, second and third cousins, and were attacking it with a speed and ferocity that suggested they were worried an army was about to charge up with big spoons.
Amanda was never a big eater, but that night she didn’t even touch her meal. When I’d finished eating – the guards finished ahead of me by several minutes – she signaled our waitress to take her spaghetti and wrap it up, along with a couple of extra meatballs.
‘I’ve upset you,’ I said.
‘Everything I’ve heard so far is circumstantial.’
‘After Tucson, Jenny came here. She and her old cameraman from Channel Eight set up surveillance cameras in the woods across from Wade’s place. When they went back to retrieve them they got beaten, badly. No broken bones but plenty of damage inflicted by professionals.’
‘My God! Because of Tim Wade?’
‘That’s my guess.’
She sat for a moment, stunned. Then she said, ‘About my ulterior motive for this dinner …?’
‘The one you mentioned earlier today.’
‘Theresa Wade emailed, asking me to be their deputy campaign manager.’
‘The election is in only a few days,’ I said, instantly regretting the demeaning sound of my words. I was stunned, and appalled, at the Wades.
‘You don’t think I can handle it?’ She grinned as though she was teasing, but she was dead serious.
‘You can handle anything, as your recent entry into big business attests. It’s just, just …’
I was stammering, babbling.
She held up her hand for me to stop. ‘Of course, I understand that it’s just titular, a ploy,’ she said. ‘They don’t want my advice, especially since the campaign is essentially over and Tim’s election is a sure thing. So why, Dek? Why offer me such a title?’
She was baiting me, wanting me to say the obvious: that the Wades were playing her like a harp to get me to back off.
The waitress walked up with Amanda’s dinner in a white plastic bag and set it on the table, along with the check.
I grabbed the tab before the billionairess could. ‘My treat, gents,’ I said across the aisle.
Both bodyguards smiled. They were still sweating.
Amanda shook her head, grinning again. ‘Tim and Theresa quietly pull strings to get good things done,’ she said. ‘Things you never hear of. Hospital funding, school additions, personal medical assistance – they do it all without one word of self-aggrandizement. So what you’re inferring makes no sense to me. They’re good people.’
I suspected both Wades to be nothing for certain at all, so I said nothing.
‘Come on, there must be dozens of words circling in that brain of yours,’ she prompted after a moment. ‘You can’t summon up one?’
There were more than dozens. There were hundreds, mostly variations of the words, ‘Run like hell,’ encircled in a cartoon balloon above the beaten, swollen face of Jenny Galecki.
I set down cash for the bill. She stood up. I stood up. Amazingly, the two guards stood up, and lightly despite the family platter they’d just knocked down.
She handed her spaghetti to me. ‘Not one word, Dek?’
I found one for those cunning siblings, the Wades.
‘Pre-emptive,’ I said.