Chapter Sixteen
Our Monday meeting had been a drone of problems and the same processes to manage them. Then we talked about implementing new processes to manage the same issues. Then we had new discussion points that were just shades of the old ones. The agency collected money on behalf of clients, deducted ten percent, and sent the rest. Anytime money moved, there were the twin matters of how much and how fast it moved. Nothing else really counted.
When I came back, Pam tapped her fingers like a drum machine, hitting the stapler on fourths. “Danny Dickinsonian.”
“Is he here?” I asked.
“Nope. Wanted you to meet him at his office downtown. Said it was important and apologies for the imposition et cetera. New polls show he’s getting beaten on the east side. Badly. Might be about that.” Tap tap tappa.
Running for mayor was an eighty-hour-a-week job. I’d known that from the beginning. “What do I have this afternoon?”
“Staff meeting at one. Procedure and protocols touchbase with Wanda’s team at two.”
Taking an afternoon jaunt downtown was undoubtedly ten times more appealing than either of those events. “Tell him I’ll be there.”
* * *
The DA’s office was in a 1920s stone-carved edifice a few blocks from my loft, so I parked at home and walked. The heat weighed on me. The streets, though not crowded, were populated.
The DA’s building was set back from the street with an expanse of lawn utilized by birds, squirrels, and urban picnickers. The tweedy grey brickwork matched the flat city sky, and as I got closer, I saw the stonework from a lost era. Like Roman reliefs, granite men carried logs, fished in a pebble sea, built houses from petrified wood, all immortalized with the toil of a sculptor’s sweat.
The lady at the front desk knew me, but I still needed to sign in and get a sticker. I was spared the thumbprint. I saw Gerry, Daniel’s top strategist, in the hall.
He stopped short and put out his hand. “Theresa, thank you for going to Catholic Charities.” When he shook my hand, he also kissed my cheek and patted my back.
“I was afraid I did more harm than good,” I said.
“No. Even a failed tactic can serve an overall strategy. Don’t forget that.”
“So I’m a failed tactic now?” I said with a smile and a lilt. “I thought I meant more to you than that.”
He pressed his lips together. “You’re perfect. You have politics in your blood. If I could, in good conscience, ask you to take that stupid bastard back, I would. He can’t lose with you by him.”
I had a few answers, none of them politic or kind. I chose the most bland. “He can win just fine without me.”
“Maybe, but it’ll be close.”
“Any idea why I’m here?”
“Come,” he said.
I let him lead me down the hall to Daniel’s office. A married couple he used for promotion was just leaving. They greeted me, then suddenly I was alone with my ex-fiancé.
He had a biggish office by 1920s standards. The windows slid up and down with rackety tickticks, and the walls were molded in every place molding could be placed. Over the last ninety years, it had been painted bi-annually, rounding out the edges until the room looked like the inside of a wedding cake.
“Found her wandering the halls,” Gerry said before ducking out.
Daniel had on a thin blue tie and white shirt with the cuffs rolled to the elbows. His wooden chair was dressed in his jacket, and he was every bit the good-looking, hardworking crusader for justice. “Theresa, thank you for coming.”
“After the election, this beck-and-call thing is over,” I said.
He approached a chestnut table that must have come with the building and pulled out a chair for me. I sat. He leaned on his desk and crossed his arms instead of sitting with me. I crossed my legs and faced him.
“It’s been a tough few days here,” he said.
“I have a protocol review I can still make if you don’t have something to say to me.”
“I know how much you love those.” He smiled his big, natural white smile.
“There were threats something would actually get done at this one.”
“Then it’s not really a protocol review.”
I sighed. “This is about Antonio again? Just say it.”
“I need to know what he is to you.”
“Oh, God. Really?” I stood. “Dan, honey, you’re so far out of line.”
“It matters. It matters to my campaign, and it matters to me. I need your help, and in order for me to even ask, I need to know the nature of your relationship with him.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Have you had sex with him?”
“Daniel!”
“I need to know.”
“Is this a deposition? Are you taking notes? Where’s the court reporter?”
He sighed and dropped his arms. “We’ve reached a wonderful pause in a war that’s been going on for a few decades. We have the Carlonis for all manner of shit, and I’ll file charges when everything’s in order. But the other side? The Giraldi family? I have nothing. I have accounting files we got from the NSA, but everything looks clean. I need them looked at by someone with your eye.”
“And you don’t have a team of people?”
“They have skill. You have talent.”
“I think this is about more than my talent.” I couldn’t hold to that line for long because he’d asked me to look at the Carloni files months ago. He’d switched to their rivals, but his ideals about my talents were well known.
“We got Donna Maria Carloni on embezzlement thanks to a mole. Good mole. I got nothing with Spinelli,” he said.
“Who you can’t even prove is the head of any kind of crime organization, much less the Giraldis.”
“He’s committed a few murders to get to where he is, Tink. Just because I can’t prove it doesn’t make it any less true. And yes, I’m terrified of you being anywhere near him, and yes, this is two birds with one stone. I get your eyes on his books, and I get you to tell me where his malfeasance is. But if you’re sleeping with him, I can’t use you. I’ll have to fly a guy in from Quantico, and that’ll alert everyone that I have the NSA docs. They’ll be questioned and possibly yanked.”
“This is a hot mess.”
“I know.”
“The only way for me to avoid drama is to walk out right now,” I said. “But you have me curious. And you know I think you’re the best man for the mayor’s mansion.”
“So will you?”
“I had sex with him twice. But it’s over.”
He looked down to hide his expression, but I saw his fingers tighten. My first reaction was to tell him tough crap. He threw me away. It was my right to sleep with anyone I wanted. My second reaction was subtler.
“Do you have time for a personal question?” I asked.
He looked at me. I’d hurt him. I loved him, and I’d hurt him. I knew how he felt when he did it to me.
“I need it answered completely and honestly,” I said. “I have no energy for beating around the bush or confidence boosts right now.”
“Okay.”
“Is something about me just not enough? I mean, is there something inherently unsatisfying?”
He took a long time answering. “I always wondered if you really enjoyed it.”
I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “I did. A lot.”
He rushed to open the door for me. “I’m avoiding asking for another chance.”
“Well done, Mister Mayor.”
* * *
I got back to WDE in time for the protocol review, which was marginally productive. When I got back to my office, another vase of red roses stood on Pam’s desk.
I don’t give up so easy
Yeah. He’d chase me, catch me, and continue with Marina or whoever else made him feel good. An inaccessible little heiress would quickly become boring.
After seven years, Daniel didn’t know if I’d enjoyed sex. What was wrong with me? Was I empty inside? I’d thought I’d imagined every horrifying answer he could have given me, but I hadn’t even scratched the surface.
At least I knew what the problem was. Maybe if I went back to Daniel with the assurance that I did like sex, he wouldn’t look elsewhere. Maybe. But the thought of going back to him just depressed me.