I asked, 'And Frank never mentioned they were in the war together?'
'No, I don't think so. Or I didn't remember. But you know Frank. That doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean it was a secret.'
'Isn't that a bit of a coincidence? Two guys from the same platoon wind up working together in the Service?'
Callie gave me the look she used to give Frank.
Steve said, 'The Service recruited heavy after the war. And the CIA, the Marshals, the FBI. A lot of soldiers were steered the same directions by the same people, sent one another resumes. We tried to help each other out.' He looked at his folded hands-he hadn't meant to let that 'we' slip, not with me in the room.
'When did they work together?' I asked.
'Up until the end,' Callie said.
We sat with that one, all three of us, and then I asked, 'What did you know about Charlie?'
'Nothing, really.'
'People always remember more than they think,' Steve said. He looked interested despite himself. 'Think about when you went to his house.'
'Oh-he had a son,' Callie said. 'Troubled kid. I want to say drugs. A few years older than you, Nicky.'
'Did they look alike? Same mouth?'
'I don't really remember. Just that he was so scowly. Charlie wasn't exactly all polka dots and moonbeams himself.'
'Was he married?' Steve and I asked at the same time.
'Going through a divorce. A rough one, maybe. He had a few tense late-night talks with Frank just before Frank was killed.'
'He came to the house?' I asked.
'Phone.'
Steve's jaw firmed, and our eyes met. Tense late-night calls and then a bullet to Frank's gut. I took a while to work up the nerve. 'Do you think there's any chance Frank got pulled into something dirty?'
Callie said, 'Never.'
Steve looked at her, and I could see the skepticism in the set of his mouth, the sympathy in his eyes.
Callie implored me, 'You don't believe that either.'
'No,' I said quietly, 'I don't. But I don't like the way this is looking. There's some compelling stuff pointing to Caruthers. You know how Frank was about him. And now Charlie working under Caruthers, too. Plus, everything surfacing now, right before an election-'
'How do you know it's not Bilton behind it?' Callie asked. 'That would be more in character. Bilton's the one who got a bounce in the polls from the San Onofre threat.'
I said, 'Bilton has no link to Frank. Or Charlie. Or anything Frank was dealing with seventeen years ago.'
Callie said, 'I'd believe that the whole Secret Service was dirty before I'd believe Frank was.'
I felt diminished, as if in asking the question I'd given up something precious. I considered what she'd just told me about stars in my eyes and wondered what the costs of that might be for her, for me. If our image of Frank came apart, what else would have to come apart with it? More than just the past seventeen years.
I slid the photograph into my pocket and rose. 'Thank you. I'm sorry, again, for everything.'
Callie stood nervously. 'Maybe we could see each other sometime
… calmer. Em seems to have taken to you.'
'Could've fooled me,' I said.
Steve said, 'I don't want him near my daughter.'
Callie shot him a glare. 'Then I'll see my son when she's not home. Shouldn't be hard-she sleeps over at her mother's every chance she gets.' She looked back at me, a bit desperately, and I felt the pull of old fears. Contact meant trails and trace evidence and sedans with killed headlights in the night. And then a phone call. Sweat stung the faint lacerations on the base of my neck. Callie was studying me still, trying to figure out what to say. 'Maybe we could cook or something.'
'I don't cook,' I said, as gently as I could.
Callie made a noise in the back of her throat, and they walked me to the door. I was glad I'd parked blocks away so I could breathe the sharp night air for a bit.
I stood nervously at the threshold, then moved awkwardly to hug my mom. She embraced me, and then we pulled apart and stood there for a moment, unsure what to do next.
I offered my hand to Steve, but he just glared at me and said, 'If half of what you're saying is right, you've got a long, nasty haul between you and the truth. And from what I've heard, you've never finished anything in your life.'
Moths swirled around the porch light, pinging the glass. 'Maybe this,' I said.
'What?'
Hurwitz, Gregg
We Know (aka Trust no One) (2008)
'Maybe I'll finish this.'
I heard them arguing in hushed tones as I headed down the walk, the picture of Frank and Charlie snugged in my back pocket.
Chapter 27
My windows were locked, the front door dead-bolted, the blinds closed. Spread on my sliced mattress was the shrapnel from whatever had sailed in and exploded my life. A black-and-white photograph of Frank pointing with his mess-hall fork, Charlie turning to listen from one table over. A hundred eighty grand, neatly bound with purple bands. A torn sheet of numerals in nine columns. A pager number, scrawled in a con girl's signature on a scrap of paper.
What the hell did all this have to do with my stepfather?
Sitting cross-legged, I propped my face on my fists and studied my neat display. Blissful stillness. No helicopters, no zoom lenses, no sniper scopes, no loud locksmiths and transparent Nokias and limousine rides. The lights were off, the items illuminated only by the muted TV and the streetlight spill around the blinds.
The Voice had to be Charlie's son. Nothing else explained as well the shared mouth, the hitch in his words when he explained his debt to the dead. Charlie did this for me. Why 'for' him? Callie's description was a start. Troubled kid. I want to say drugs. A few years older than you, Nicky.
It was a story of a father and son. Sonny got into trouble, owed the wrong kind of people the wrong kind of money. More money than Pop could spot him on a Secret Service pension. So Pop came to the rescue, hauling out a seventeen-year-old secret and putting it up for sale when it was at peak election-year value. To a point he'd known how to handle himself. He had army training. Secret Service training. He knew who the right people were in Caruthers's inner circle and how to contact them. He started going wrong when he didn't figure out that his two- hundred-grand down payment was bait to set the hook. And the Powers That Be had lived up to their title. When he found himself cornered, Charlie's last desperate shot was the stepson of an agent he'd worked with, an agent he'd admired.
Charlie's last resort, sadly, was me.
Seventeen years ago Frank had been pushed to his snapping point. By what? Had he and Charlie stumbled across something while digging up dirt for Caruthers? Or covering something up for him?
Frank had skipped a few days of work there at the end, for the first time in his career. He was into something bad and was figuring out how to get clear of it without putting me and Callie at risk. He was cautious, guarded, strategic. What he didn't count on was me following my dick out the door that night, giving the wet-work man his window of opportunity.
But if Charlie also knew the secret, why had he been spared the visit in the night? Maybe they didn't know he knew. Or maybe he'd cut a deal. Regardless, all these years later would he have been willing to reopen Pandora's box because his kid had gotten himself into a fresh round of trouble?
