Allison jumps out of her chair, spilling the remnants of hercup of coffee, knocking Larry’s notepad to the floor. She moves quickly from awalk to a run out of the grocery store.
TWO DAYS EARLIER…
Allison climbs into Mat’s Mercedes outside the building thathouses the law offices of Ronald McGaffrey. Today is the second time she hasmet with McGaffrey, after her original lawyer, Paul Riley, dropped out of thecase.
“Everything go okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. It was fine. Ron’s good. He’s not Paul Riley but he’sgood.”
“I’ve always heard that,” Mat agrees.
The sun is setting, casting the commercial district inshadows. Mat maneuvers his vehicle through the heavy rush-hour traffic on theway to the interstate to take Allison home. The windshield is dirty and thewater fluid is frozen. The car is filthy from the salt and slush that hassplashed up recently. It is that wet, cold season when you’d just rather be inside.
And now she has to drive home with Mat. Mat is one of thosedrivers who curses at others on the road, has a running commentary on the lanechanges, the poor acceleration, the general timidity of other drivers. He is adifferent person when he gets behind the wheel.
But in fairness, Mat is better about that now, primarily,she assumes, because of everything that’s happened. He has treated Allisongingerly since her arrest, more respectfully than ever before. Say what youwill about him, he has tried to make this easier for his ex-wife.
“The case is circumstantial,” Allison says. “They haveplenty of bad stuff but none of it can be tied directly to me. That, more thananything, is our defense.”
“But ‘more than anything’ does not mean everything,” Matsays.
She doesn’t respond to that. She knows what Mat’s thinking,and he’s right. Ron McGaffrey immediately focused on the one potential opening.Things were amiss with Sam Dillon. Word trickled out, not long after Allison’sarrest, that federal prosecutors were probing a potential bribery scandal inthe state legislature. Opponents of House Bill 1551, placing Flanagan-Maxx’sproduct Divalpro on the state’s list of prior-approved Medicaid drugs, hadcried foul when three senators-Strauss, Almundo, and Blake-suddenly flippedtheir positions during veto session last November, and the bill quickly madeits way to the governor’s desk.
Of course it raised red flags. The local paper,
And in the midst of all this, the man principallyresponsible for the passage of House Bill 1551, lobbyist Samuel Dillon,was found murdered in his lake home just outside the city.
“Ron isn’t going to point at you, Mat.” She says it bluntly,to get it over with.
“I was stupid,” Mat says, perhaps only to himself. “Reallystupid.” Mat has a tendency toward self-flagellation when things are rough. Heis a tough man but his self-esteem is thin.
“You got away with it.” What he did was stupid. There is norationalization, in the end, though Allison has created some. Every politiciantakes bribes, in some form or another, except they are usually countenanced bythe law. No one will ever convince her that a state representative who takes$10,000 in perfectly legal contributions from a company, then supportslegislation on that company’s behalf, has not been “bribed” in some sense ofthe word. There is, in some twisted way, at least some element offorthrightness in simply stuffing the money in a legislator’s pocket. The onlydifference, in her mind, is disclosure. Legal contributions go on the books,are reported publicly, but who really cares? Who really pays attention todisclosures from the state board of elections?
Which is not to say that what Mat did was okay. But giventhe murky land of political contributions, and knowing this flawed man for overtwo decades in a way probably no one else ever has, Allison can at least givesome context to what he did. She believes, in her heart, that no good wouldcome from putting Mat in prison for this crime. She can forgive him thistransgression. It is not the bribery of three senators that really bothers her,anyway.
It’s the fact that he was too cowardly to do it himself.
ONE DAY EARLIER…
McCoy reads over the message sent yesterday, Wednesday thetwenty-fourth, by Ram Haroon to the web address
The work is nearing completion. It should be ready withinsix weeks. However, transfer cannot be made until the legal proceeding iscompleted, or the matter is terminated in other ways. Target of mid-May, at thelatest.
She feels a chill down her spine. Haroon is referring toAllison’s trial, the “legal proceeding,” which has a trial date in late April.He is saying that they will not be confident enough to make their move untilthey are sure that Allison Pagone has said nothing, or knows nothing.
Or until the matter is “terminated in other ways,” meaning,she assumes, the termination of Allison Pagone.
ONE DAY EARLIER…
I am thirteen,” Ram said to his father. “I am old enough tounderstand whatever it is you are doing.”
His father didn’t respond at first, looked at his sonsuspiciously.
“I am a carpet merchant,” he insisted.
“You talk about weapons,” Ram said, accusingly. “You talkabout the Americans. You talk about bombs and jihad and the Liberation-”
“Enough!” his father exclaimed. And so it went for threeweeks. Ram hardly spoke to his father. Ram’s bitterness was not directed atwhat he was sure his father was doing, but at the fact that he had been shutout. He still missed his mother and Beni desperately, even several years later,and now he was beginning to feel as if he did not know his father, either.
And that, finally-after Ram explained this very thing toFather-was what led to their conversation.
“I will tell you,” Father began. “Because you are right. Youare old enough. But I want you to understand one thing, Zulfi.”
Ram recoiled. It was the first time in years that Father hadcalled him by his given name.
“I want you to understand,” he said, “that just because I amdoing this does not mean that you should as well.” And then he carefully placedhis hand on Ram’s shoulder and sat him down in a chair. When he
