Mel was pained. "Of course I knew it, girl! But it's like dragging a man out of a burning car. You have to act, you can't think about the possibility that he'll later sue you for spraining his shoulder. I did what I had to do. I did it well." Mel turned and looked at her, a dry grin coming to his lips. "I was awesome, frankly."
"Well, what are you getting at?"
"You know who Markene Caldicott is?"
"Of course I do!" She was surprised that Mel would even ask this question.
"Oh, that's right. You're probably the type who listens to RNA all the time."
Mary Catherine grinned and shook her head. Most people considered Radio North America to be the height of journalistic sophistication, but Mel still had it lumped together with MTV and Arena Football. He got his radio news via shortwave, from the BBC.
"What about Markene Caldicott?" she said.
"Well, apparently she's some hotshot reporter," Mel said skeptically.
"You could say that."
"She's after my ass. And I don't mean that in the sexual sense," Mel said. "She's called every single person I've ever worked with. I can read this woman's mind like a fucking cereal box."
"What's she doing?"
"She'd really like to shoot down your father," Mel said, "but she can't, because Willy is without flaw, and was incapacitated for the last couple of months besides. So instead, she is going to do a big expose where she makes me out to be this sort of Richelieu with a yarmulke. The shadowy power who pulled the strings while Cozzano drooled down his chin. You know the kind of thing."
"Your basic over inflated election-year scandal."
"Yeah. She probably figures that Willy is going to get into the race and she wants to be the first to take shots at him. So I'm going to head her off at the pass."
"How are you going to do that?"
"I'm going to drive back up to Daley," Mel said. He and Mary Catherine had both fallen into the habit of using Cozzano's poststroke jargon. "And have dinner with Mark McCabe. A political reporter from the Trib. And I'm going to spill my guts. Going to lay the whole thing out."
Mary Catherine was shocked. "You're going to tell him everything?"
Mel looked at her with an expression that was somewhere between fatherly disappointment and pity. "Are you nuts? Of course I'm not going to tell him everything. I'm just going to make it look like I'm telling him everything."
"Oh."
"So McCabe will get a big front-page story. We will release the information in the form most favourable to us. Markene Caldicott will have been scooped, and her story, if she even bothers to air the damn thing, will have virtually no impact. And the Cozzano family and administration will be totally exonerated, because I, the runty Jew lawyer, will take all the heat."
"That's very good of you," Mary Catherine said.
Mel laughed and slapped the steering wheel. "Ha! Good of me. I like that. You downstaters just kill me. 'Very good of you,'" he mimicked her, not unkindly, and laughed again. Mary Catherine could feel her face radiating warmth. "Look, kid, this is not about good. This is not a good and evil thing, this is about being smart and taking our losses in the way that is least disadvantageous to us. That's what I am trying to set up here."
"Okay."
"I'm going to great lengths to be clever and set this whole thing up the way that is best for us," Mel continued, now starting to sound almost a little peeved, "and it just kills me when you try to characterize it as some kind of church-social altruism. It's like you're failing to see and appreciate the full artistry that is involved here."
"Sorry. I think it's very devious," she said, now getting a little peeved herself.
"Thank you. That's a compliment I can handle. Now we are on the same wavelength."
"Good."
"We're both listening to the same station," Mel said, extending the metaphor. "Both listening to the BBC instead of that RNA crap." He spoke the final word with a resounding, sardonic whiplash that made them both laugh, albeit nervously. "So let's stay away from this weepy sentimental shit and do what is best for our families over the next several generations," Mel said.
"Okay."
"What is best, for right now, is that I, Mel Meyer, get out of Dodge."
"What do you mean?"
Mel sighed, a little defeated, as if he'd been hoping that Mary Catherine would simply get it. "Jesus, girl, I'm going public tonight. Telling the whole world that I did something unethical. I'm going to take the heat for the decisions that I made in January and February. Which were good decisions - but sooner or later, the karma comes back and hits you. Now, once I've made myself out to be the evil, scheming homunculus that I am, how can I possibly continue to be a close adviser and confidante of the Cozzano clan? The whole point is that everyone throws shit at me, it all sticks, and then I run away and take all the shit with me. If I stick around you guys, some of it's bound to rub off."
As Mel explained all of this, the whole situation became clear to Mary Catherine, and the cloud of emotion that had obscured the beginning of this conversation lifted away. She felt calm and relaxed.
"How far away are you going to run?"
"Oh, pretty far, at least for a while," Mel said. "I'm formally severing my relationship with your father, as his attorney, and sending his files over to Ty Addison at Norton Addison Goldberg Green. Ty'll take good care of you guys. I will stay in touch by phone, but this is the last time I'll show my face in Tuscola for a while. It's okay for us to see each other when you come up to Chicago, as long as it's something casual, like lunch. Anything more than that, and someone in the media will notice it, and make it out to look like I'm still lurking in the shadows, pulling strings."
"What about the long term you were talking about?"
"Long term, nothing has changed. This is a blip on the screen of history."
During the conversation he had been steering the Mercedes randomly around the gridwork of roads that covered the area, occasionally zigzagging his way back toward the Cozzano farmhouse. Myron Morris's Suburban passed them going the other way and they waved at each other. Finally Mel stopped next to Mary Catherine's car, parked along the shoulder, and she realized that he meant for her to get out.
"Do I get a hug?" she asked. "Or is that too sinister for Markene Caldicott?"
Mel just sat there passively, as though suddenly stunned by what he was doing.
Mary Catherine unfasted her seat belt, leaned over the gap between the seats, and encircled Mel's neck in her arms, nearly lying down sideways across the front of the car. Mel wrapped his arms around her body and held her tight for at least a minute. Then he let go, all of a sudden.
"Okay, I want to be alone now," he said.
Mary Catherine pecked him once on the cheek and climbed rapidly out of the car without looking back. She slammed the door behind her. Mel's car was moving forward before the door was even shut. The tires broke loose from the pavement, spun, and squealed, kicking back twin spurts of blue smoke, and the Mercedes shot down the road past the old farmhouse, just like in the old days. In the windows of the farmhouse, the faces of young Cozzanos appeared, drawn by the noise, then drifted away as they saw that it was just Mel Meyer, the old lawyer from Chicago who liked to drive fast.
William A. Cozzano was out for his morning constitutional: out his back door, through the gate and into the alley, half a block down, through a break in the hedge, and into the Thorsen's driveway. Down the edge of their side yard, waving to ninety-year-old Mrs. Thorsen, who was invariably standing at her kitchen window washing dishes, then into the street, another half block up, through a gap in the chain-link fence around Tuscola City park, and from there, wherever he wanted to go. It was a route he had been following since he had learned to walk the first time, and it was one of the first thing he had done when he learned to walk the second time.