Conspiracy Theory(94)
“People like you always do, don’t you?” Ryall said. “You make a grand show of being Mother Teresa, but you never let go of the money and you never let go of the power. I ought to do a nice little exposé on you. Just so that the city of Philadelphia can see that you’re not anything at all like a saint.”
“I’ve never pretended to be a saint. Please get me all the publicity you can. Adelphos House can always use donations.”
“For all you know, I’ve already told the police whatever it is you don’t want me to tell them,” Ryall said. “I’ve already been questioned. I spent four hours at the police department the day after your brother was murdered. It was disgusting. But I told them everything I know.”
“Fine. Then it’s possible that you don’t know what I think you do. No harm done. But if you get some bright idea in your head, keep it to yourself. Don’t tell the police. Don’t tell Larry King. Just calm down and shut up. Because if you don’t, I’m going to take these pictures and shred your life, from the bottom up.”
“You’re such a bitch,” Ryall said. “You always were, even when I first started the column. You were probably a bitch in grade school.”
“I make a point of it.” Anne Ross Wyler stood up and took the snapshots off the coffee table. “You can have these, you know. I have the negatives. And I have copies. It doesn’t matter.”
“I want them out of here as fast as you can make them go.”
“Fine. Here’s one more thing. Stay away from Patsy Lennon from now on. And stay away from that street and all the rest of the girls on it. I’m out there almost every night. I’ll be watching for you. If you have to fuck children, take a sex tour to Thailand.”
“What wonderful language. All of you have completely foul mouths, have you ever noticed that? Do they teach that kind of thing in dancing classes?”
Her tote bag was packed up and back over her shoulder. Her coat was in her hands. Ryall didn’t remember her getting either. She was not a tall woman, but she was very trim. He didn’t think she went on diets or worked out to keep herself that way. Why was he thinking about Anne Ross Wyler on a diet? He thought he was losing his mind.
“I don’t understand how you can live the way you do,” she said, looking around the living room. Then she turned her back to him and walked off, out of the living room, into the foyer so tiny it wasn’t much more than a breathing space shoved against the door. He didn’t think she’d been talking about the living room, but he couldn’t be sure.
What he could be sure of was that he was sick. If he didn’t get up and get to the bathroom immediately, he would soil himself. All his muscles felt completely out of control. Everything was twitching. And the worst thing was, he had no idea what she was talking about. He really could have told the police already. He couldn’t remember what he had told them. He’d talked and talked and talked. He’d said whatever had come into his head. The same was true with what he’d been doing on television. He’d just talked.
He thought of himself, just through the gates when all hell had broken loose, the shouts of the security guards, the running of men in dark clothes. It had been like watching a movie. If there had been some secret there that he was supposed to have witnessed, he couldn’t begin to imagine what it was.
2
David Alden was getting extremely tired of the game. It wasn’t that he wanted to stop playing it, exactly. No matter what Annie Ross said, he was not, at heart, an emotional dropout from hypercapitalism. He’d always liked his job when Tony was alive. He’d liked being the one who knew everything, all the projections, all the risks, all the secrets. He’d liked being the one who made the decisions. Tony was supposed to make them, but in nine cases out of ten Tony left it to him, and they were both satisfied. Being Tony Ross’s second in command was like being the chief clerk to a justice of the Supreme Court. You were the one who had the expertise, who did the work, who made the change happen. You weren’t the one who got the blame for it when things went wrong. Well, David thought, not quite. If things went wrong enough, you could end up with plenty of blame, but it would be private blame, meted out in secret, not the kind that appeared on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal.
Of course, when things went right, you didn’t get quite as much of the credit as you deserved, but David was finding he minded that less than he thought he had. Nobody in the bank seemed to know what to make of him anymore. They couldn’t get along without him. He was the only one who knew what Tony had known and who could explain it to them. They didn’t want to have to get along with him at all. Two murders had made him seem more than a little jinxed, and he could tell that some of them were beginning to wonder if he had committed them, or if he had somehow brought them on. Maybe there was a jealous husband out there aiming for his back. Maybe the jealous husband had less-than-perfect aim. Maybe the nuts had found out who he was and were using him as a pilot fish. Maybe he was a pilot fish by choice.