Deadlock

5

Down the hall from Millie Hollander’s room, Anne Deveraux stuck a finger in a cop’s face. “Did you not hear me?” she said.

The cop nodded. “And I’m telling you – ”

She flashed her credential again. “United States Senate, okay?”

“Nobody sees her,” the cop said. “Not the president, not the Dalai Lama, unless the doctor says so.”

She looked around at the milling masses, recognizing some members of the press waiting for the impending press conference called by Dr. Myron Cross. That would be a whitewash, of course, telling her nothing she needed to hear.

But she’d hang around anyway. Maybe there would be an opening somewhere. What would they do if she walked right in?

She’d say she was paying her respects from a senator. A man concerned about her health, as he would any prominent member of the Court or Congress. A man who had admired her judicial integrity for years.

She would not reveal the real reason she was there, of course. She would not mention the word Jaws.

She felt a touch on her arm. She whirled around hard. Anne did not like to be touched.

She faced a short man with sweat beads on his forehead.

“You’re Anne Deveraux, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“You work for Senator Levering, right?”

She was getting rapidly ticked at this guy. He was – what was the word? – ratlike. He had a longish, pointed nose and eyes that seemed to be scouting for food.

“What business is that of yours?” Anne asked.

He smiled, showing two prominent front teeth. Rodent choppers. “I know everything that goes on in this town, every poop that’s a scoop. Dan Ricks.” He extended his hand.

Anne ignored it. “I’m busy now, Mr. Ricks. If you’d like an appointment – ”

“Get off it,” he said. “I write for The National Exposure.”

“Tabloid guy?”

“Reporter,” he said defensively.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Don’t get huffy. You remember when the New York Times sat on that Congressman Conley story?”

Lawrence Conley had been forced to resign over an allegation that he’d had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl. “What about it?” Anne asked.

“I broke that.”

That’s right, Anne recalled. It was originally an Exposure story. And suddenly Anne felt like Bogart in Casablanca, when he realized the ratlike Peter Lorre had murdered two Nazis by himself. I am a little more impressed with you.

“You have an angle on this?” Anne asked.

“You’re an angle,” Ricks said.

“Me?”

“What’s the senator sending you over here for?”

“Who says he sent me?”

“Why are you here?”

“Why is that your business?”

“Everything’s my business in this town.”

“Everything?”

“What isn’t, I make my business.”

Anne nodded. The Exposure was not to be trifled with. It could indeed break things that would follow you around like a bad smell.

“I like you, Ricks,” Anne lied. “I’ll level with you. Senator Levering is concerned about Justice Hollander’s health. It’s no secret she might be chief justice someday.”

Ricks nodded. Anne did not like the way he was studying her.

“She’s also a woman,” Ricks said.

“Gee, Ricks, you are a good reporter.”

Ricks didn’t flinch. “What do you know about the accident?”

“I don’t know anything about anything,” Anne said. “I’m here on an official call, and that’s it. No more, no less.”

“Uh-huh. The senator has quite a reputation.”

“You’re scampering up the wrong monument.”

“Tell me where I should scamper.”

“Why should I do that?”

“It pays to be nice to the Exposure.”

Anne fingered a cigarette in her pocket. “That almost sounds like a threat, Mr. Ricks.”

“From the press?” he said with over-the-top outrage. “We only want the truth, Ms. Deveraux. Remember our motto – ‘All the news that fits, we print.’ ” He took out a card and snapped it between his thumb and forefinger, like a magician producing the ace of spades.

“Call me if you hear anything,” he said. “Maybe we can help each other out sometime.”

And with a political instinct born of countless spin sessions, Anne Deveraux took the card.

6

“Is that you, Mom?” Millie whispered hoarsely into the phone.

“Oh Millie, your voice,” Ethel Hollander said. Her mother’s voice sounded reedy, as it always did when she worried about something.

“I’m going to be fine, Mom. They tell me.”

“When I heard it on TV, I about jumped through the phone line. I couldn’t get through. I called and called…”

“They’re being careful with me.”

“It’s on all the programs. They show that picture of you from five years ago.”

“What are they saying on the programs?”

“That they don’t know why you were out there.”

“Where?”

“Alone. At night. What happened?”

Millie put her hand on her pounding head and closed her eyes. It was coming back now. She wished it wouldn’t. Would she have to tell the story? To the police? They would want to know who she had been with, how the whole thing happened. More publicity.

“Millie?”

“I’m here, Mom.”