Conspiracy Theory(29)

Standing at the door to the darkroom, Lucinda hesitated. The red light wasn’t on, which should mean it was okay to go in, but Lucinda had the feeling that Annie wasn’t always careful about the lights. Finally, she knocked. There was the sound of metal things being moved around—what went on in a darkroom Lucinda didn’t know—and Annie said, “Come in.”

Lucinda went in. Annie was sitting on a swivel stool. Print after photographic print was spread out on the long, wide worktable in front of her. She had her retractable art light trained right over the ones in the middle. Lu-cinda closed the door behind her. In spite of the art light, the room was dark.

“Well?” she said.

Annie shook her head. “Ambiguous. Far too ambiguous, unfortunately. And yet I know it was him. I recognized him as soon as I saw him.”

“I still don’t understand why that isn’t enough.”

“It isn’t enough because he’s got friends in high places and they’re not about to let him go down in a way that will make him look bad. Even if he really isn’t one of our own.”

“This is the Main Line stuff you’re always talking about? One of our own?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m beginning to wish you hadn’t taken the car that night. If you hadn’t taken the car, you wouldn’t have been able to follow him.”

“It was too cold a night not to take the car,” Annie said. Then she pushed her stool back until she could reach the switch on the back wall and turned on the overhead lights. In the now bright light, Lucinda could see that Annie was wearing that Freedom FROM Religion button she’d taken to putting on since the national prayer service after September 11. “Crap,” Annie said. “I don’t know what to do about this at all.”

“I don’t suppose you could let it drop.”

“No,” Annie said. “I saw the man pick up a thirteen-year-old girl and pay her twenty dollars to blow him. You know who it was? It was Patsy Lennon.”

“Good Lord,” Lucinda said.

“Yeah, I know. That kid has more issues than National Geographic. She’s a complete mess and an addict besides. But there he was, and there she was, and all I got a picture of was Patsy’s head and his hand on top of it. Maybe I’ll go looking for a telephoto lens. Maybe if they think I’m not there and can’t see them, they’ll go back to being out front about what they do.”

“It’s too bad you didn’t take pictures later, when you got to that party. It seems like everybody in the world is looking for whoever it is who shot your brother.”

Annie sighed. “I was invited to that party, did you know that? Oh, Charlotte’s never been able to stand me, I’m everything she hates about everything, but Tony always insisted. I’ve got the invitation upstairs. I should have gone. I could have stood around at the buffet table buttonholing political hotshots and financial wizards and reciting chapter and verse about their forays onto the Strip. Except that I wouldn’t have gotten anybody but the second-raters. Did you know that? The people who really run things, the people like Tony, know better than to even try something like this.”

“He’s not one of the people who run things?”

“No,” Annie said. “He’s—” She let her hands flutter in the air. She looked, Lucinda thought, incredibly tired. “I’ve often wondered if some of them don’t indulge, anyway. I know the attraction exists. Maybe what people like that do—” She pointed at the photograph in front of her. Lucinda couldn’t see anything in it but blur. “Maybe what they do is find suitable companions for the people who can’t find them for themselves. Can’t because they don’t dare. Can’t you see the headlines? Presidential Friend Linked to Child Prostitution. Head of International Bank Arrested for Soliciting Sex with Minor. The major papers wouldn’t run them, but the rags would. Thank God for the National Enquirer.”

“So?” Lucinda said. “Does it go on?”

“I don’t know. On one level, it seems to me inevitable that it would. On another, it seems to me just as inevitable that it wouldn’t.”

“And I thought you’d know, growing up with those people,” Lucinda said.

Annie laughed. “In my day, there were some things they didn’t tell daughters. There probably still are. I just wish I knew what all that was about. There’s only one reason to rush off for a quickie blow job from Patsy Lennon on the way to the biggest charity ball of the season, and that’s because he’s got the bug and he’s got it bad. He has to be completely out of control. Which poses a lot of interesting questions.”