The Hearing Read online

  Hardy crossed his arms and stuck out a potbelly the size of a basketball.

  “Four years ago, we put in two-inch Plexiglas windows, an inch of Kevlar between the brick facade and the interior plaster. It’ll take twenty thousand pounds per square inch. That’s about one ton of RDX in an unfocused detonation at fifty feet. After that …”

  Carl said, “And if it’s more than that?”

  “Blast’ll ride right up the front, like a mountain of water going a hundred miles an hour. Will the house stand up to that? I don’t know. Explosives are like people. Fickle. They surprise you. Could be the whole block’ll go and that house’ll be left standing all by itself. But I wouldn’t wanta bet on it. Now, if it’s not high explosive, say it’s an ampho bomb, a lot slower, more of a pusher than cutter, things might not be so bad.”

  Carl said, “The limo?”

  Hardy thought for a moment. “Another hundred and eighty thousand psi, the limo’s gonna fly. Weighs close to a ton, and anything over a hundred thousand psi will move it. Over two hundred thousand psi, you’ve got a projectile. I saw the Mercedes coming in, an E290 Turbodiesel. Take out the seats, strip it, you can pack in over a hundred cubic feet of the double-F mix they used in Oklahoma. That blows, the limo’s gonna fly. I’d say, unobstructed, it’d do thirty feet easy. Hits the garage wall, it’ll make a nice hole. That’s a side wall. No Kevlar. I wanted to fortify the sides and back, but all they’d spring for was the street. They kept saying—”

  “Double-F?”

  “Fuel and fertilizer, ammonium nitrate.”

  Knight said, “If you’ve got all the numbers right, what are the injuries to the passengers?”

  Hardy had the strangeness Carl had found in other men obsessed with things that explode. He screwed up his face and gazed at the ceiling, his brain shuffling numbers.

  “An armored limo blast in Beirut eleven years ago, the car flew forty feet, attained an altitude of six feet, and the four men inside climbed out with cuts, contusions, cracked ribs.”

  He smiled, geezer eyes flashing. “Some ride.”

  Iverson glanced uneasily at Knight.

  “But they could live,” Hardy said quickly, evidently seeing a need for encouragement.

  Carl said, “If they drive out, and the Mercedes explodes while they’re in the driveway or on the street, what are their chances?”

  “Outside?” Hardy’s eyes went wide with shock. “Driveway? Street?”

  Carl said, “Yeah.”

  “Parts, my friend. Take us three days pick up the mess.”

  Carl nodded and looked at Iverson. “Still want them to drive out?”

  Iverson unbuttoned his collar and loosened the bow tie. They were going to be here a while. “And where we are now. What’ll happen here?”

  Hardy grinned. “How far are we? Three blocks? Four hundred yards? A rumble. Shake, rattle, ‘n’ roll. Broken windows. I intend to stay away from the windows.”

  The truck was getting crowded. Through the open door, on the street, Carl spotted a familiar face. Familiar not because he’d seen it before, but because he recognized the air of furtive detachment. Its owner lived among secrets, as the other agents did, but his secrets, intended for a sharply limited official clientele, never had to endure exposure in a court of law.

  Carl excused himself and went out to the street. The man, carrying a set of car keys, held the door of a blue Ford, and they got in.

  Selecting the ignition key, the man said, “We believe it’s a remote. Unless it’s very old, which would be a surprise, it transmits not merely a signal but a code. So the transmitter can be anywhere. Could even be on a satellite. It’s passive, gives no indication of its presence until it’s activated, and then it’s too late. So we’re not wasting time looking for it, and you shouldn’t either. Approaching the problem from the other end—people rather than technology—has been more promising. The driver of the Mercedes was a Colombian DAS agent, working under the cover of a private Miami security company owned by TransInter, which of course is Ernesto Vicaro. There’ve also been intercepts and other data pointing to Vicaro and a bag of mixed objectives—politics, drugs, vengeance. Not uncommon. And the Supreme Court nomination, of course. I have to admit, that’s a first.”

  “How do you know who—”

  “Videotapes of the vehicle’s driver at the security booth. The phony documents and plates can be taken to have been a product of Colombian intelligence, to whom Vicaro, as you know, is not exactly a stranger.”

  The man stuck the key into the ignition.

  Carl said, “The transmitter may be on a satellite, but someone with a view of the house has to press a button.”

  “And that button device could be disguised as almost anything. Cigarette pack. Belt buckle. Don’t even think of trying to find it. Find Vicaro’s people instead. Squeeze them. The right guy will scream. They always do. Anyway, that’s our advice. Maybe it’ll work in time, maybe not. Do as you like. I’m glad it’s not me.” He grinned. “I was never here.”

  “Why’d you tell me? Why not the FBI or ATF?”

  “Someone said, ‘Tell Carl.’ So I told Carl. And one other thing. An intercept an hour ago, Bogotá to a phone in the Trade Commission—‘Have you seen the girl?’ They’re watching for someone, the girl or the judge. So bringing them out would not be a good idea, in my view.”

  The man turned the key, the engine started, and Carl got out.

  The car drove off, slowly.

  Samantha said, “How’re we gonna go to the bathroom?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Do you have to go now?”

  “No. TV, bar, telephone—they should have a toilet in this thing.” Her voice had an edge to it, enough to remind him of the young girl pounding on the car window in Saint-Tropez. “I was on a bus once that had a toilet. And that was in Germany. You’d think—can’t we go back in the house to use the bathroom?”

  “I don’t think so, Samantha. We’ll have to make some kind of arrangement out here.”

  “In this limousine?”

  “Or maybe the garage. I don’t see any other alternative.”

  “If you think—”

  She caught herself, and took a breath.

  “I’m sorry. You don’t need that, right? Like you said, we’ll make other arrangements, when the time comes.”

  The phone rang.

  “Can Samantha hear me?”

  It was Carl.

  “No. Tell me what’s happening. Where’s Michelle?”

  Gus’s voice had a confident, cheerful lilt, certainly for Samantha’s benefit.

  “She’s not back yet. We know she went out, but we don’t know where. Soon as we find her, I’ll call.”

  “Find her, Carl.”

  “I will. Listen, the limo people out here say if we want to have power to keep the telephone up you’ll have to stay off everything else, including the air-conditioning.”

  “It’s really hot in here, Carl.”

  “I can guess. I’m also told to ask you to keep the windows closed. They’re bulletproof and they’ll protect against flying debris. And from now on we’ll have to use the scrambler.” The limousine telephone was equipped with an optional scrambling device. “We don’t want anyone copying our conversations. And we wouldn’t like to hear them on TV and radio.”

  “How good is the encryption?”

  “Most devices can break it in forty-five hours, but state of the art’s more like ten minutes, and NSA does it simultaneously. So even with the scrambling, we’re advised to talk with care.”

  “What’s the estimate, Carl—how long are we going to be here?”

  “I guess until we can find the remote, or some other way to neutralize the Mercedes. There’re about a million people out here trying to figure how to do that. We’ve got people on the way from Mercedes, from the armor manufacturer, the architect who designed Blossom is coming over, also the builder, and a mob of people from FBI, ATF, State Department Security, a lot of people who investig
ated Oklahoma and the World Trade Center. Even Israeli intelligence is sending someone, and no one knows more about car bombs than they do.”

  “Don’t worry. Samantha and I’ve been wanting to have some time together, and now we’ve got it. Right, Samantha? Okay, Carl. Call back when you know something.”

  “Someone says it’d help if we had an inventory of the food and drink in the bar in there.”

  “We’ll count the drinks and cocktail biscuits.”

  “So there really is a bomb? That’s not a mistake?”

  Samantha thought maybe High Society wasn’t the right name for the new book after all—maybe she should call this part of her life Blown to Bits. But she didn’t really think anything bad would happen. This wasn’t the kind of house where bad things happened.

  “I’m afraid it’s not a mistake,” Gus said. “But they’ve got a lot of experts out there trying to disconnect it, and when they do we’ll be able to go out. Anyway, we’ll have some time together. We don’t need to worry about getting interrupted.”

  “Yeah, except maybe Boom! Sorry, just trying to be funny.” The child again.

  For five minutes they were silent. Then Samantha said, “I’m glad we’re alone. There’ve been things I’ve sort of wanted to tell you. And Michelle.”

  “What things?”

  “Well … How much did my father tell you about me?”

  “Almost nothing.”

  “Did you talk to my mom?”

  “I’ve never met her.”

  “So you don’t know anything?”

  “Not really.”

  Gus felt a curious sense of anxiety. He wasn’t comfortable cooped up in the back seat of a limousine with a thirteen-year-old girl. He knew nothing at all about thirteen-year-old girls.

  She’d been facing him, but now she turned toward the front of the car, put her back against the seat, and clasped her hands in her lap. The lights were off in the garage, and the only illumination came through two small windows next to the metal roll-up garage door. The sun had started to set.

  She said, “There’s a lot maybe I should tell you.”

  “Then I hope you will.”

  “The thing is, once I tell, I don’t know what will happen.”

  “I don’t think anything bad will happen, Samantha. You’ll still be my daughter and Michelle’s daughter and we’ll still love you. Nothing will change that.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t heard yet. Sometimes parents say that and then something happens and Wham!, there it goes. I had a friend that happened to.”

  “It won’t happen, Samantha. You can tell me or not. That’s your decision. But whatever it is, I’m going to keep on loving you, and so is Michelle. That’s our decision.”

  “You don’t know how my mom and dad met, I mean Larry and Doreen, anything about that?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “That he’s from Albania?”

  “No.”

  “He’s from the royal family, I mean before the, you know, the communists came. He changed his name because he said nobody in Milwaukee could pronounce Albanian names.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s true. You don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t know any reason why that can’t be true, Samantha.”

  “He used to be a concert piano player. Even when he was like seventeen or eighteen. He has posters of himself, all dressed up, when he played at concert halls. And then he was in East Berlin and he escaped through the Wall and he started playing in nightclubs and hotels. And this group of hotels gave him a job and he was playing in a hotel in Florida, in Palm Beach, and he met my mom. He said she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. She was a teacher in Milwaukee on vacation. So he went to Milwaukee and they got married.”

  She had let it all out at once, and now she leaned back and stared at him through the half-light, assessing his reaction.

  He was silent, taking it in. He’d heard a lot of odd stories as a judge, and sometimes it was hard to know what was true. Odd didn’t always mean it was a lie.

  Finally she said, “Do you believe that?”

  She seemed not particularly accustomed to being believed.

  “Yes, I believe that. Shouldn’t I believe it?”

  “Of course you should. You’re a judge, and judges believe the truth.”

  What a statement. Judges believe the truth.

  Gus said, “What happened next? They got married, and—they stayed in Milwaukee?”

  “They stayed in Milwaukee. My dad played in hotels and my mom taught. The earliest thing I remember is my mom and me going to school together and my dad was still in bed because he’d been working late. And then when we got back home my dad would have something to eat all fixed for us on the kitchen table.”

  “That was nice.”

  “Yeah, and then my dad started drinking a lot.”

  “He told you that?”

  “No. My mom told me. She told me plenty. And some of it, later my dad told me. I ask him stuff and he can’t lie, he’s a terrible liar. Not like my mom. She lies all the time. A friend of hers told me if her lips are moving she’s lying, that’s how you tell. I knew something was wrong because there weren’t any more little snacks on the table when we got home, he was still in bed. And he started losing jobs, and my mom said he had to play in little bars and not the big hotels. And then my mom got into astrology, did you know about that?”

  “No.”

  “It was something she did with friends and other teachers, and she was really good at it, you know, getting all these people to believe she could tell their future from the stars. Teachers, and they’re supposed to be smart. Anyway, she started charging people for this and she branched out into reading tarot cards and Ouija boards and spiritism and talking to dead people, and all this stuff. And I guess eventually she was making more money at that than she was at teaching, so she quit teaching. And now my mom and dad weren’t what they used to be anymore. They really changed. He was playing in dirty little bars, that’s what my mom called them, and she was at home talking to people’s dead relatives.”

  “What did you think of all that?”

  She shrugged. “To me it was just—well, it’s what she did. I didn’t think anything. What would I think? I was just a little kid. Like, maybe everybody’s mom and dad did stuff like that. Except that they sort of became different. I remember they just—mostly my mom, she started getting hard, she wasn’t fun anymore. I remember trying to stay out of her way. And then Janine came to stay with us. I guess you don’t know about that either?”

  “Janine? No.”

  “That’s when I really started to wonder about things. Because I was six then and I could see from the way things were at my friends’ homes that things were definitely a little different where I lived.”

  “Who was Janine?”

  Samantha hesitated. This was something she wasn’t sure she should tell. If she did, she’d end up telling everything. Would he believe her? Would he jump out of the limousine and run for it? Things would change. But—she couldn’t not tell him.

  “Well, Janine was about eighteen, and she was someone who used to come over for all the horoscope, Ouija board mumbo jumbo, that’s what my friends and I called it. Then my dad started losing his job more often, from the drinking, and I guess now he was running out of bars that would give him jobs, and we needed money and Janine didn’t have a place to live because her parents had kicked her out for some reason, but she had a job as I don’t know what and so she moved in with us—you sure you want to hear all this?”

  “Very sure.”

  “She moved in and started paying rent. And then she had a friend named Dorothy, and Dorothy moved in too. And now we’ve got Janine and Dorothy around the house and all their boyfriends. And there were a lot of boyfriends. And one of my friends, my best friend, who used to come over to the house a lot, told her sister about Janine and Dorothy and all their boyfriends and how they always had lots of money
for clothes and things, and her sister, who was seventeen, said well maybe they’re prostitutes. What’s a prostitute? I was seven then. So she explained what prostitutes were. Wow! And then she said that if Janine and Dorothy lived in our house and they were prostitutes, then our house was a whorehouse. She said I was living in a whorehouse and my mother was a madam. And I got real mad at her because I didn’t know anything about what a whorehouse was or what a madam was, but it certainly sounded like a whorehouse and a madam were insults.”

  Gus was stunned. How much of this was true?

  Samantha said, “You’re shocked, right?”

  Gus said, “Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it’s a rather surprising story. I—”

  “It’s not a story. It’s true.”

  “I don’t doubt you, Samantha. I believe it. I’m just—you were seven?”

  “Yeah, seven. Your little girl, living in a whorehouse. What if you’d known, right? But it wasn’t that bad. Janine and Dorothy were nice. I liked them. Only it did get worse, though. You want to hear? Maybe I should stop. Would you like a drink?”

  Would he like a drink!

  “I want to hear it all, Samantha. If you don’t mind. Maybe you’d rather—”

  “No, I want to tell you. I’ve been wanting to do this for years, tell someone.”

  “Then go ahead.” He would have given anything to have Michelle here.

  “Men started coming over who weren’t Janine and Dorothy’s friends, I mean who they didn’t bring. My mom would meet them and invite them over.”

  “Where was Larry?”

  “He never had anything to do with it. He was just living there. Living there and drinking and sometimes playing in a bar someplace.”

  “He didn’t know—”

  “Of course he knew. How could he not know? But whenever he said something, Mom just yelled at him or ignored him. They needed the money and he wasn’t making any. Not much, anyway, and what he made he mostly drank.”

  “I see.”

  “So these men are coming over, and pretty soon Janine and Dorothy and my mom get other girls to come over, because there were so many men and they wanted other girls. The girls didn’t live there like Janine and Dorothy, but they came over. And some of the girls were younger. To me they looked old, because I was only seven, but they were younger than Janine and Dorothy, like maybe thirteen, fourteen. And they would go in the bedrooms with these old guys.”