Chapter One
I should feel sorrier," Raymond Horgan says.
I wonder at first if he is talking about the eulogy he is
going to deliver. He has just looked over his notes again
and is returning two index cards to the breast pocket of
his blue serge suit. But when I catch his expression I
recognize that his remark was personal. From the rear seat
of the county's Buick, he stares through the auto window
toward the traffic thickening as we approach the South
End. His look has taken on a meditative cast. As I watch
him, it strikes me that this pose would have been
effective as The Picture for this year's campaign:
Raymond's thick features fixed in an aspect of solemnity,
courage, and a trace of sorrow. He shows something of the
stoic air of this sometimes sad metropolis, like the
soiled bricks and tarpaper roofs of this part of town.
It is a commonplace among those working around Raymond to
say he does not look well. Twenty months ago he split with
Ann, his wife of thirty years. He has picked up weight and
a perpetual grimness of expression which suggests he has
finally reached that time of life when he now believes
that many painful things will not improve. A year ago the
wagering was that Raymond did not have the stamina or
interest to run again, and he waited until four months
before the primary to finally announce. Some say it was
addiction to power and public life that made him proceed.
I believe the chief impulse was Raymond's outright hatred
of his primary opponent, Nico Delia Guardia, who was until
last year another deputy prosecuting attorney in our
office. Whatever the motivation, it has proved a difficult
campaign. While the money lasted, there were agencies
involved and media consultants. Three young men of dubious
sexuality dictated as to matters such as The Picture, and
saw to it that this image of Raymond was applied to the
backside of one in every four buses in the city. In the
picture he has a coaxed smile, meant to show a toughened
whimsy. I think the photograph makes him look like a kind
of sap. It is one more sign that Raymond has fallen out of
step. That is probably what he means when he says he
should feel sorrier. He means that events seem to be
slipping past him again.
Raymond goes on talking about Carolyn Polhemus's death
three nights ago, on the first of April.
"It's as if I can't reach it. I have Nico on one side
making out like I'm the one who murdered her. And every
jackass in the world with press credentials wants to know
when we're going to find the killer. And the secretaries
are crying in the johns. And in the end, you know, there's
this woman to think about. Christ, I knew her as a
probation officer before she graduated law school. She
worked for me, I hired her. A smart, sexy gal. A helluva
lawyer. And you think about it eventually, you know, the
actual event - I think I'm jaded, but Jesus. Some cretin
breaks in there. And that's how she ends up, that's her au
revoir? With some demented slug cracking her skull and
giving her a jump. Jesus," Raymond says again. "You can't
feel sorry enough."
"No one broke in," I finally say. My sudden declarative
tone surprises even me. Raymond, who has momentarily
resumed his consideration of a lapful of papers brought
along from the office, rears his head and fixes me with an
astute gray eye.
"Where do you get that from?"
I am slow to answer.
"We find the lady raped and bound," says Raymond. "Off-
hand, I wouldn't be starting off my investigation with her
friends and admirers."
"No broken windows," I say, "no forced doors."
At this point Cody, the thirty-year copper who is living
out his last days on the force by driving Raymond's county
car, breaks into the conversation from the front seat.
Cody has been unusually quiet today, sparing us the
customary reverie about the burn deals and good pinches he
has witnessed in gross on most city avenues. Unlike
Raymond - or, for that matter, me - he has no difficulty
bringing himself to sorrow. He appears to have been
without sleep, which gives his face an edge of roughened
grief. My comment about the condition of Carolyn's
apartment has stirred him for some reason.
"Every door and window in the joint was unlocked," he
says. "She liked it that way. The broad was living in
wonderland."
"I think somebody was being clever," I tell them both. "I
think that's misdirection."
"Come on, Rusty," Raymond says. "We're looking for a bum.
We don't need fucking Sherlock Holmes. Don't try to get
ahead of the murder dicks. Keep your head down and walk in
a straight line. Okay? Catch me a perpetrator and save my
worthless ass." He smiles at me then, a warm, savvy look.
Raymond wants me to know he is bearing up. Besides, there
is no need to further emphasize the implications of
catching Carolyn's killer.
In his reported comments about Carolyn's death, Nico has
been base and exploitative and relentless. 'The
prosecuting attorney's lax approach to law enforcement for
the last twelve years has made him the accomplice of the
city's criminal elements. Even the members of his own
staff are no longer safe, as this tragedy illustrates.'
Nico has not explained how his own hiring by Raymond as a
deputy P.A. more than a decade ago fit into Raymond's
liaison with lawlessness. But it is not the politician's
lot to explain. Besides, Nico has always been shameless in
his public conduct. That is one thing that made him ripe
for a political career.
Ripe or not, Nico is widely expected to lose the primary,
now eighteen days away. Raymond Horgan has wowed Kindle
County's one and a half million registered voters for
better than a decade. This year he is yet to win the party
endorsement, but that is largely due to an ancient
factional dispute with the mayor. Raymond's political
people - a group that has never included me - believe that
when the first of the public polls are published in the
next week and a half, other Party leaders will be able to
force the mayor to reverse field, and that Raymond will be
safe for another quadrennium. In this one-party town,
victory in the primary is tantamount to election.
Cody turns back from the front seat and mentions that it
is getting close to one. Raymond nods absently. Cody takes
this for assent and reaches below the dash to let the
siren go. He uses it in two brief spells, almost like
punctuation in the traffic, but the cars and trucks part
neatly and the dark Buick noses ahead. The neighborhood
here is still marginal - older shingle-sided houses,
splintering porches. Kids with a kind of potato-y pallor
play with balls and ropes at the edge of the street. I
grew up about three blocks from here, in an apartment over
my father's bakery. I recall them as dark years. During
the day my mother and I, when I was not in school, helped
my father in the shop. At night we stayed in one locked
room while my father drank. There were no other children.
The neighborhood today is not much different, still full
of people like my father: Serbians, as he was; Ukrainians,
Italians, Poles - ethnic types who keep their peace and
their own dim outlook.
We are stopped dead in the heavy traffic of Friday
afternoon. Cody has driven up the back end of a city bus,
which emits its noxious fumes with an intestinal rumble. A
Horgan campaign poster is right there, too, and Raymond
looks out overhead, six feet wide, with the hapless
expression of a TV talk-show host or the spokesman for
some canned cat food. And I cannot help myself. Raymond
Horgan is my future and my past. I have been a dozen years
with him, years full of authentic loyalty and admiration.
I am his second-in-command, and his fall would be my own.
But there is no silencing the voice of discontent; it has
its own imperatives. And it speaks now to the image
overhead in a sudden forthright way. You sap, it says. You
are, it says, a sap.
As we turn down Third Street, I can see that the funeral
has become an important event for the police department.
Half the parked cars are black-and-whites, and there are
cops in pairs and threes moving up and down the walks.
Killing a prosecutor is only one step short of killing a
cop, and whatever the institutional interests, Carolyn had
many friends on the force - the sort of loyal lieges a
good P.A. develops by appreciating skilled police work and
making sure it is not squandered in court. Then, of
course, there is the fact that she was a beautiful woman
and one of modern temperament. Carolyn, we know, got
around.
Nearer the chapel the traffic is hopelessly congested. We
stutter only a few feet before waiting for the cars ahead
to disgorge passengers. The vehicles of the very
important - limousines with official plates, press people
looking for spaces nearby - clog the way with bovine
indifference. The broadcast reporters in particular obey
neither local ordinance nor the rules of common civility.
The Minicam van of one of the stations, complete with its
rooftop radar dish, is parked on the sidewalk directly in
front of the open oak doors of the chapel, and a number of
reporters are working the crowd as if they were at a
prizefight, thrusting microphones at arriving officials.
"Afterward," Raymond says, as he bulls through the press
horde that encircles the car as soon as we finally reach
the curb. He explains that he is going to make some
remarks in eulogy which he will repeat again outside. He
pauses long enough to pet Stanley Rosenberg from Channel
5. Stanley, as usual, will get the first interview.
Paul Dry, from the mayor's staff, is motioning to me. His
Honor, it seems, would like a word with Raymond before the
service begins. I relay the message just as Horgan is
pulling free of the reporters. He makes a face - unwisely,
for Dry can certainly see it - before he walks off with
Paul, disappearing into the gothic dark of the church. The
mayor, Augustine Bolcarro, has the character of a tyrant.
Ten years ago, when Raymond Horgan was the hot face in
town, he almost ran Bolcarro out of office. Almost. Since
losing that primary, Raymond has made all the appropriate
gestures of fealty. But Bolcarro still feels the ache of
his old wounds. Now that it is, at last, Raymond's turn to
endure a contested primary, the mayor has claimed that his
party role demands neutrality and he has designed to
withhold the party's endorsement as well. Clearly he is
enjoying watching Raymond struggle on his own toward
shore. When Horgan finally hits the beach, Augie will be
the first to greet him, saying he knew Raymond was a
winner all along.