she is as curious to learn what I can tell her as I am to learn what she can tell me. Her late husband, in addition to being a golf and poker buddy of many years’ standing, was one of my father’s two real confidants-the other was my mother-during the difficult days after Greg Haramoto stepped forward. Addison told me once that the two doctors Cross were extraordinarily close. I hope this turns out to be true.
I took a taxi to Lanie’s office, so we drive over to Adams-Morgan, my old neighborhood, in her blocky and practical Volvo, which she was driving at the time of my father’s confirmation hearings. She has picked out a Cuban place that she loves, and which she has not visited in a while. Lanie is, as always, well turned out, in a slimming navy pantsuit and an ankle-length vicuna coat that must have cost my monthly salary. She has to be back at the office by two, she tells me, so we will have to hurry.
During the painstaking journey across town-I forgot that Lanie drives as cautiously as her choice of car suggests-we exchange the expected pleasantries of two acquaintances who have not really talked in half a decade, and who were never particularly close. I also keep an eye out for a green sedan so ordinary it might stand out, but there are too many ordinary cars around. Lanie, oblivious to my vigilance, mentions that she saw my in-laws at a dinner party last month, and they looked fit enough to live forever, then realizes how I might take this and covers her slip with tales of her children: the oldest, her son, is rising in the Air Force, dragging his wife and three children all over the world; the second oldest, a daughter, is a freshly minted history professor right at Howard, divorced and raising a son on her own; and the youngest, another daughter, is a homemaker in New Rochelle, raising three children while her husband, who “does something with municipal bonds,” commutes to Manhattan. Lanie is proud of her children and delighted to have seven grandchildren, and I remember, uneasily, the way that some of us used to tease the Cross kids for their unquestioning devotion to their parents, the Fifth Commandment being, for most of us, just a collection of silly words hanging on the wall of the Sunday-school classroom. But I suppose if I were adopted by two parents as loving and generous as the Crosses I would put them ahead of everything too.
Around the time our appetizers run out, it is Lanie, finally, who brings us around to our purpose. “So, anyway, you said you wanted to talk about your father.”
“Well, about his relationship with your husband.”
“Relationship?” Holding her water glass in her thin hand, Lanie seems amused.
I color a bit. “What I mean is, I want to know anything you’re willing to tell me that your husband told you about my father.”
“What Leander told me about your father?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?” Her eyes twinkle. I have forgotten this about Melanie, her mischievous way of communicating with men by repeating back to them, as questions, whatever they say to her. I suppose I thought she would have outgrown it, but it is, perhaps, an instinct with her, not so much flirtatious as cautious. She likes to keep men off their guard, to enable her to stay on hers.
“Not all of it. But, thinking back to… well, when my father was nominated to the Supreme Court and had all that trouble. My dad didn’t ask many people’s advice, but I know he asked Dr. Cross’s. Anything you can tell me about what your husband told you… well, that’s what I’d like to know.”
Lanie brushes her short bangs away from her face, eats a couple of bites of her bistec empanizado, pondering. I lean back and sip my Diet Pepsi, waiting for her to make up her mind. I don’t know why everyone I talk to seems considerably less than forthcoming. Perhaps I am touching a common wound.
“There isn’t that much to tell,” she finally says. She smiles nervously, displaying perfectly capped teeth. “Leander confided in me about your dad less than everybody seems to think. A lot less.”
I file away the odd word everybody as I nod my encouragement. “Anything you can remember.”
“Those were not the easiest times,” she warns.
“I understand that, but… well, there are things I have to know.”
“Things you have to know?”
“When his nomination… when the whole thing fell apart, he didn’t talk to a lot of people. I know he talked to Dr. Cross. To your husband. I just want to know what they talked about. And what… I guess you’d say, what my father’s mood was.”
Lanie is still fencing. Perhaps her husband instructed her not to tell. “Why is this so important to you, Talcott? Does this have something to do with Kimmer’s judgeship?”
Ouch! I remember Mallory Corcoran: Aren’t there any secrets in this town? Well, no, not really, as my father learned. I choose my words warily. “No, it’s because of some other things that have been happening.”
“That private detective, you mean? The one who drowned.”
Ouch again! “Uh, yes. Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“He tried to interview me, you know. He talked to a few people from the old days. I don’t think any of them told him very much.” About what? I want to ask, but Lanie does not pause in her narrative, and I do not want to interrupt. “Not that any of them had very much to tell him. He was looking for some papers or something. I don’t know the details, because I refused to talk to him. The nerve!” She frowns, shakes her head. “From what I hear, he was worse than a policeman. Badgering elderly people in their homes, intimidating them. Grace Funderburke had to sic her dog on him, I heard. Carl Little told him he was going to get his shotgun, not that Carl has probably fired the thing in a quartercentury. And they say he gave poor Gigi Walker such a hard time she was in tears when he left.”
“What was he giving them a hard time about?” I ask, fascinated.
Lanie seems irritated. “I told you, Talcott, I’m not sure. The FBI went around and interviewed all of them about it. I guess he must have broken some law. But, from what I understand, it was what I told you, papers. Some papers your father was supposed to have left behind when he passed. I don’t know.” Another shrug, elaborate now, closing the subject. “I didn’t talk to him,” she reminds me.
I take a moment, forking rice and beans into my mouth as a cover. If Lanie did not grant an interview to Colin Scott, then who is the everybody who thought her husband would have confided in her? Does she just mean her friends along Sixteenth Street? Or is there a level to which I have not penetrated?
I am sure of one thing: I am visiting the right person.
“Lanie, let’s talk about my father, not about the detective.”
“If you want.”
“I need to know what your husband told you. Please. Anything you can remember.”
“You haven’t told me why, Talcott.”
And, indeed, I have not. I realize that what I say has to be good. If Melanie Cross has not spoken of these matters in fifteen years or more, there is no reason for me to think she is ready to unburden herself now just because I ask her to.
“Because I think my father wanted you to tell me,” I say.
This gets her attention. Her wise eyes flash at me, her thin brows rising in question, and in doubt.
“He left me a note,” I explain.
Lanie cross does not ask me what the note said. She merely nods her slim head, perhaps in resignation. “Tal, you know, this might not be easy for you to hear.”
“I know that, but I think I need to hear it.”
“You mean you want to.”
“I don’t think this is about wants any more.”
She is unhappy. “Tal, you understand, my Leander was a surgeon, not a psychiatrist. But… well… okay. You want to talk about what happened after the hearings? Fine. I’ll tell you.” And she does, straight out, no frills. “Leander told me he thought your father had a breakdown.”
“A breakdown? What does that mean, a breakdown?”
“You know what it means. A nervous breakdown. He… When all the stories about Jack Ziegler started to come out, Oliver would call up Leander in the middle of the night-probably, oh, two or three times during that first
