Land Of The Blind

'Okay,' he says.

'Monday morning, you go to your probation officer and tell him that you're using again and you need to get into treatment.' She writes, 3. Treatment.

'Good,' he says, 'I've been thinking that I need some help to…'

She doesn't bother listening.

'And number four. You avoid me. Because if you don't do all four of these things – and we both know you won't – then I'm gonna shoot you in your fucking head. Do you understand?' She writes, 4. Me.

'Yeah,' he says.

Caroline rips the page from her notebook, tosses it on the bed, straightens up, and starts for the door.

'Hey.' Pete has pulled the blanket up to his neck, suddenly modest. 'Will you tell Clark I said hi?'

She's a little unsure what to make of this. 'Sure,' she says.

'And tell him that if I could, I would've voted for him last time.'

And that, of course, is when it hits her. She stops cold at the door to Pete Decker's apartment and closes her eyes. She did vote for him.

4

CLARK ANTHONY MASON

Clark Anthony Mason works over the third legal pad just as he did the first two, almost in a state of self- hypnosis. Caroline watches him with a new kind of fascination. Tony Mason. No shit. He chews the end of his pen and takes a sip of the coffee she gave him. She didn't say anything when she got back from Pete's, just handed him the coffee and went to write an intelligence report encouraging the drug detectives to go back and visit Pete Decker. She looks in the window of Interview Two. So that's Tony Mason. Now it's obvious: the solid good looks, the weird diction, the politician's bearing. Before, she couldn't see past the dirty clothes, the long hair, and especially the eye patch. She kept running the current version of the Loon through her memory (Who do I know with an eye patch?) rather than trying to picture him without it.

Caroline checks her watch. It's going on nine o'clock Saturday morning. He's been at this almost twelve hours. She walks back to her desk and flips through her Rolodex until she finds the number of a newspaper reporter she nearly dated before remembering that she hates newspaper reporters. She taps out the number and Evan O'Neal answers on the second ring.

'Evan. It's Caroline Mabry. I'm sorry to bother you at home.'

'How you been, Caroline?' Evan covered cops back when she was on patrol, but now he's a government reporter.

'Good. I need to run a name past you: Tony Mason.'

'The kid who ran against Nethercutt?' Kid. Only in politics does someone in his thirties qualify as a kid. But in truth he had seemed like a kid, standing at the opposite podium against the gray-haired four-term Republican, looking as though, if elected to the House of Representatives, he would act immediately to change the mascot and make Homecoming a formal dance.

'Yeah, that Tony Mason.'

'No shit? You seeing him now, Caroline?'

Funny that a cop would call a reporter and the reporter would assume that it was about romance. She's not sure if that says something about her, or Evan, or Tony Mason. She looks up, through the small window of the interview room. 'Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am seeing him,' she says.

'You get fixed up?'

'Something like that.'

Evan is quiet for a moment.

'What is it?' Caroline asks.

'It's just… I don't know… you can do better.'

'Yeah,' she says. 'I'm starting to think that. What do you know about him?'

'Mason? Just that he got thirty-six percent and that was twice as much as anyone expected from such a lamb.'

'Lamb?'

'Yeah.' Evan shifts the phone. 'Nethercutt owns the seat, just like Foley did before him, so the Democrats have to pick their spots, only take a big run every six years or so. The rest of the time, they just throw lambs to slaughter – an old labor tough or a cute young lawyer like Tony Mason. Some political outsider who gets outspent five-to-one and goes home disillusioned and broke.'

Caroline writes down the word 'lawyer.' She's beginning to recall details of the election now, and she wonders if her lax memory has to do with her job, or the funk she's been in, or if the loser in any election just naturally fades from memory that quickly – the Dukakis syndrome. 'Wasn't he rich?'

'Mason? Yeah,' Evan says. 'Cashed out some tech stock and spent all his money trying to get elected. That's the only reason he even got thirty-six percent.'

'Do you have a list of his donations?'

'I got his filings at the office. Sure.'

'Fax it to me?'

'Monday?'

'Today?'

'It's Saturday, Caroline.'

'I know. But you owe me.' She gave Evan a tip once about a former police chief who drove around drunk at night, pulling over teenage girls and 'frisking' them.

'Okay,' Evan says. 'But remind me to never go out with a cop.'

'Why?'

'I'm just not sure I could pass the background check.'

She ignores this. 'So does he sometimes go by the name Clark?'

'That's his real name. Clark Anthony Mason. He didn't think the Maxwell House Dems would vote for someone with two last names. And he thought Anthony sounded too professorial or blue blood or something. If you can imagine some kid from the Valley worrying about being too blue blood.'

Evan laughs as he remembers. 'Boy, that's classic lamb behavior, worrying about the menu while the restaurant burns down.'

'What do you mean?' Caroline asked.

'It's just… here's this kid, doesn't look twenty-five years old, all stiff and square, grows up in the Valley and goes off to Seattle, comes home thinking they're just going to hand him a congressional seat. And… Jesus, that eye.'

'Yeah, he wears an eye patch,' she says. 'I don't remember that from the election.'

'No, he wore one of those glass eyes, didn't move at all. You got the feeling he sat in front of the mirror until he figured which angle the eye looked straight and not cockeyed. That was the only way he'd face people, straight on, without moving his eye. On his posters, he was always staring right at you. It was a little creepy, especially in the debates. Guy moved like a robot.'

Caroline had just assumed he was stiff and liked that about him, that he didn't seem polished. But mostly she voted for him because he was for gun control and Nethercutt wasn't. Over time she'd become a one-issue voter. 'I was trying to remember what exactly he ran on…'

'Oh, the usual economic development crap; he was gonna bring high-tech jobs here. 'Course, back then, you couldn't run for dogcatcher without promising you'd bring computer jobs to Spokane. I have to admit, your boy really sold it, though.'

'So how did Nethercutt beat him?'

'Mostly by ignoring him. Let the PACs and the issue people run the negative shit: that he was a flaming liberal,