“Andre doesn’t even suspect that I know about his bogus statistics! Oh God! All those years I spent in that attic, that furnace vent like an intercom-and the brilliant Dr. Selman still has no idea what I know about him. That’s how smart he is!”
Two Toes acted like he wanted to smack her one again.
“You’d better rest,” I said to him. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m hurt, too,” she said. “He hit me hard. And my wrists hurt. Could you loosen these straps a little?”
“You really don’t have much respect for my intelligence, do you?”
“That’s not true.”
We were silent. Two Toes started humming a melody I couldn’t place at first, then I realized I had heard it outside St. Anthony’s. The “Our Father.”
I watched for the security guard.
My pager went off again.
“I’ll get it!” Two Toes said, stumbling to his feet.
“Be careful!” I said, but he was already on his way into the bathroom.
“You made a mess in there!” he said to Lisa, as he came back out wearing my purse. He plopped down against the wall, still clutching the purse. He busied himself looking through it.
“Gimme the light,” he said.
“I need it.” At his sullen look, I added, “There’s a little light on my keychain. Use that.”
Good enough.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I heard Lisa say.
“As I said before, you don’t have much respect for my intelligence. I’ll admit I don’t understand this. I thought you were trying to pin Lucas’s murder on your father. But this isn’t about Andre, is it? Not about loving or hating him.”
“I don’t love him.” She stated it as fact. “He never gave me any love, I never gave him any. He doesn’t love anyone. And hate? I don’t feel enough for him to do that, either. This isn’t about what Andre is, or how I feel about him. It’s about what people-certain people-believe him to be.”
“Especially Barton Sawyer.”
She was quiet, then said, “Yes, especially Barton. Don’t you understand? Who was I when Barton first met me?”
“A young campaigner.”
“No, that’s not all. I was the daughter of a great social science statistician. A man who was making a big splash as an expert in the field of urban populations in transition. That’s the Andre the public policy-makers know. There’s quite a bit of truth to that. Just not enough truth.”
“Lucas Monroe was about to prove Andre to be an academic fraud, and perhaps a murderer,” I said. “Neither of which makes good press for a future assemblywoman.”
“Do you think anyone would trust someone whose father bilked the public the way Andre has?”
“You keep talking as if that’s his big sin, not the murder of a woman who was younger than you are now. I’ll tell you the truth, Lisa. If Nadine’s murder didn’t come to light, I’m not sure the studies would matter much. I don’t think very many people would understand how they had been cheated. Most don’t care enough about the poor to worry about whether they’ve lost their housing.”
“Barton Sawyer would understand it. It would matter to him.”
“Oh, and there goes your money.”
“More than money!” she said fiercely.
“Oh?”
“Barton would never have anything to do with me. I couldn’t stand that. He thinks I’m like he is. I’ve tried to be, but it’s not enough. He prides himself on trying to clean up politics. Do you think he’d be associated with the daughter of a murderer? Even if I withdrew my candidacy, he wouldn’t keep me on staff. The daughter of a man who falsified redevelopment studies for his own gain? Don’t you understand? If Andre’s reputation was ruined, mine would be ruined, too. I couldn’t let those papers be made public. I had to make sure you never had a chance to study them. Now-oh God, don’t you see how disappointed Barton will be?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I know exactly how disappointed he’ll be.”
She didn’t answer.
“You know what, Lisa?” I said after a moment. “To some extent, reputations are like statistics. They stand for something larger. They aren’t necessarily the facts, they’re just a way to represent the facts. Poor samples, faulty methods of correlation-they all apply, don’t they? Sometimes, you think you know someone, but you’ve based your judgments on small, carefully displayed samples of their behavior. The whole person may be different. You, for example. I’ve never really known who you are.”
“What I said upstairs,” she said, “was true. This wasn’t about you and me. I didn’t like hurting Roberta or Lucas. And you-you did so much for me. Try to believe that much of me, that I regret what I’ve done.”
For once, I kept control of my temper. I actually thought before I opened my mouth.
“Prove it,” I said.
“What?”
“Tell what you know to the police.”
“About what?”
“Everything. Nadine, Lucas’s degree, the studies. Everything.”
“I don’t know all of it,” she said slowly.
“Your political reputation is shot. You’re going to go to prison for what you did to Lucas and Roberta. If you don’t want the entire focus of the publicity to be on what a little shit you are, then turn in that father you claim not to love. Turn in Andre. Maybe Barton will come to forgive you.”
“He’ll never forgive me.”
“All right, then, suppose he doesn’t. He’s not God, Lisa. There are other people who’ve cared about you, too. Maybe later you might feel as if you did something for someone other than yourself. Maybe your mother might come to believe she had some influence on you, that you didn’t turn out to be just like Andre.”
“I’m not like him!”
“God help Marcy when she hears what you’ve done.”
She started crying. “Leave my mother out of this.”
“That’s what you’ve done. You should have gone to her a long time ago. Maybe Lucas wouldn’t have ended up on the streets if you had told her what you suspected. Maybe none of this would have been necessary.”
She cried louder now. I thought of June Monroe and didn’t care how hard Lisa cried.
“Are these your dogs?” Two Toes asked, apparently equally unmoved. He was going through my wallet.
“Yes,” I said, wondering if I’d ever get it back. “Do you like dogs?”
“Do they bite?”
“No.”
“I like them. What are their names?” he asked.
“Deke and Dunk.”
This was apparently very funny to a guardian angel.
“Be careful, you don’t want that wound to bleed too much,” I warned.
I looked out at Las Piernas. I angled myself for the slim view of the water. The Pacific usually soothes my soul, but it was too dark to see much of it now. I could see the lights of an oil island. I thought back to days when, on a student budget, I took Lisa to the beach or to parks or any place that offered student discounts-the zoo or the local skating rink. The beach was always a favorite with both of us, though. We both loved the ocean. Did she still love it, or had that changed, too? We talked of sailing away from Las Piernas. I remembered going out on the pier and feeding a quarter to the telescopes to look out at Catalina Island and the ships leaving the breakwater.
“Say that prayer again,” Two Toes said. When I finished, he said, “Amen.” We were quiet for a time.
“ROLAND HILL WAS THERE,” Lisa said into the silence.
I glanced back at her. “Who else?”
“Just Roland and my father. But Allan knew about it. He took the others away. Booter Hodges gave some sort
