you’re better off letting them alone. It don’t pay, staying mad. Your dad, he almost put me out of business. Terrible, him and that woman. But what are you going to do? You pick yourself up and roll with it. You don’t want to look back. That’s what’s great about this country-you just go on to the next thing.”
Nick looked at him, amazed. Just something that had happened to him. Was it possible it had never really mattered, the whole thing no more important than a hitch in the campaign, patched over with a booster’s platitude? Or was this just another way of telling Betty to circle the date, a hand on your shoulder on your way out the door.
“My parents never talked about it.”
“Well, that’s right. They wouldn’t.” He peered at Nick. “So you came to see me, is that it? It’s all there, you know. Matter of record.”
“Not all of it.”
Welles gave him a serious look, on guard.
“Look,” Nick said, “my father’s dead. It can’t hurt anybody anymore. It’s history. I’d just like to know, to fill in the gaps.”
Improbably, this made him smile. “History. Well, I guess it is now. We did make some history there, didn’t we? He did, anyways. What do you want to know?”
“Did Rosemary Cochrane really have new testimony, the way you announced? Did she tell you anything?”
This was clearly unexpected. “She would have,” he said, with a sly glance back.
“But she didn’t.”
Welles frowned. “Now look, I’m not raking this up again. They all said I drove her to it, but that’s b.s. I didn’t drive her to nothing. You had to know how to handle her-you needed a little pressure if you were going to get anything out of her. In the beginning, you know, when she told me about your father, I have to say I scared her into it-had to, wouldn’t have got anywhere otherwise. She knew she had to give me something. Then she just clammed up again. My opinion? Her friends got to her. God knows with what-probably scared her worse. But she still knew plenty. Thing was, how do you get her to open up? You had to turn the heat on somehow. Hell, that’s just politics. You’re from a political family, you ought to know that. You tell the papers she’s already confessed, she’s not going to have her friends to fall back on. Can’t trust her. They’re running for cover. She’s out there all alone. Maybe facing perjury, if you play it right. And she didn’t want to go to prison in the worst way.”
“She was pregnant.”
Welles looked at him, stunned. “How do you-” A sputter, like a candle.
Nick didn’t wait but slipped in under the confusion. “Look, I never said you drove her to it. I just want to know what she said. After Hoover told you to talk to her, did she mention my father right away?”
Welles missed it. “I told you, with her it was always pressure. She knew she had to give me a name.”
“Or you’d go after her.”
“Of course. What else?”
“By the way, how did Hoover know?” Nick said, trying to sound casual.
“How does he know anything? You don’t ask.”
“But she didn’t mention anyone else,” Nick said, moving away from it. Hoover.
“No, just Kotlar.”
“And she thought that was the end of it.”
“I don’t know what she thought. How could it be the end?”
“But you offered immunity.”
“From espionage charges,” he said carefully.
“Which you couldn’t prove anyway. Without bringing the Bureau into it.”
Another sly look, nodding. “That was the tricky part. But she bit. She thought we could. You know, she was guilty. There’s no doubt about that.”
“No.”
“And after she gave me a name, well, then I had her.” He smiled, then looked down, troubled. “How do you know she was pregnant?”
“She told her family. It never came out.”
“I didn’t know that. It explains a lot. Why she’d be so upset. To take her own life.” Welles shook his head.
“If she did.”
He peered at Nick, alert. “What’s all this about?”
“I always wondered,” Nick said flatly. “If he killed her.”
“Killed her?” Welles said, surprised. “Now, don’t you start thinking that way.” He raised a finger. “He was your father,” he said, as sanctimonious as his peace platform.
Nick shrugged. “It’s possible. You must have wondered. There were a lot of people in the hotel. Anybody could have gone up and- Well, couldn’t they? I mean, you were there at the time.”
“Yes, I was,” he said slowly. “With Mrs Welles.” Only his name on the list.
“But you weren’t married,” Nick said involuntarily. Two glasses.
“We married later,” Welles said evenly. “She was my date.”
Nick tried an apologetic grin. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t asking for an alibi.”
“I don’t care what you’re asking for. Your time’s up.” Welles glanced at his watch, physical evidence, then stood up. “Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t be like your father, going off half cocked. That woman was probably crazy, I don’t know. You have to work with what you’ve got. What I do know is, it’s over and done with. You’d best put your mind at ease and get on. You don’t want to go digging around the past-there’s no percentage in it. I’ve lived a long time in this town and I learned. There’s only the next thing. There isn’t any past here. You let your father be.”
Nick nodded, message received, then glanced up at his eyes, now the same hard eyes that had peered over the microphones.
“When you looked at him,” he said, “at the hearing, what were you thinking?”
Welles stopped, framing an answer. “That he was the smoothest goddamned liar I’d ever seen. That I’d never get him.”
“Maybe it takes one to know one.”
Instead of taking offense, Welles smiled. “Maybe it does, at that.”
“Thanks,” Nick said, taking his hand, wanting to see how it felt. Small. Welles raised his eyebrows. “For your time. For telling me what I wanted to know.”
But Welles misinterpreted. “It’s true. Never thought I’d get him. And I knew he was guilty.”
“What about all the others?”
“The others?” All forgotten, like campaign workers.
“The ones who weren’t guilty.”
“Well, they must have been guilty of something,” Welles said easily, “or they wouldn’t have been there.” Attending meetings. Running mimeograph machines. Flubbing loyalty checks. Thousands. Welles put his hand on Nick’s shoulder and smiled. “You know, son, you don’t know shit about politics. You should just get on to the next thing.”
Welles walked him to the door, taking a deep breath and drawing up his shoulders, ready for a new meeting. As Nick watched, the buffoon suspenders seemed to expand, his body filling back up with air, almost newsreel size.
The break came the next day. Molly took the vigil in Chevy Chase again, and Nick decided, as if he were sticking a pin in a map, to follow Irina. He drove to Dupont Circle, and by seven A.M. he was waiting halfway down her sunny street, thinking that the whole random exercise was futile. They needed five watchers, not two. He imagined the contact being made-an exchange on a park bench? How was it done? — while they were both somewhere else, never in the right place at the right time. In this lottery, Silver’s luck could hold forever while Nick drew empty mornings of delivery vans and dog-walkers. Anyway, where was she? She’d be late for work if she didn’t leave the house soon. Nick stared at her door, so preoccupied he didn’t hear the steps behind him, stopping at his open window.
“There you are.” A woman’s voice. “I suppose I have you to thank.”
