Penance Read online

  The State Office Building, located on the left side of the mall, is nearly as big as the capitol and perhaps more imposing, with slate gray stone and a red-tile roof. The State Capitol Building has a museumlike quality; the State Office Building looks like people actually work there. The members of the House of Representatives are quartered in the State Office Building, the state senators in the Capitol Building, rank having its privileges. The two buildings are connected by a long underground tunnel wide enough for a golf cart but not much else. Nobody wants our legislators to actually go outside, to be exposed to the elements.

  A security guard wearing the navy blue uniform of the State Capitol Security Force sat behind a small desk just inside the State Office Building’s main entrance. He gave me a look, but it wasn’t hard. He didn’t ask my name, he didn’t ask where I was going, he didn’t ask if I had any C4 in the heels of my shoes. The security force officers are mostly door shakers; they’re licensed to carry guns but they don’t. This is the people’s building after all and all the people are welcome. Still, people’s building or not, the State Capitol and support buildings can be awfully intimidating to visitors, as if they were purposely designed to remind us that the citizens sheltered there possess great power and influence and the rest of us do not. Moving to the information desk, I reminded myself that George McGovern once ran a motel in Connecticut.

  Meghan Chakolis was tall for a woman, maybe five-ten, five-eleven, with black hair cropped short in the style of Pete Rose. She had quick, green eyes and spoke with the irritation of some small thing gone wrong. I found her exactly where the receptionist told me she was, in the Information Office of the House of Representatives, located in the basement of the State Office Building. She nodded when I introduced myself as if she were expecting me. She agreed to answer my questions but not in private; she motioned for her co-workers to gather around.

  “I’d like to speak to you about Joseph Sherman,” I told her. She visibly relaxed with the words.

  “Is that all? I thought you wanted to talk about Carol Catherine,” she said, and her co-workers drifted away.

  “Carol Catherine Monroe?” That was the second time the politician’s name had come up during the investigation.

  “Ever since she announced her candidacy for governor, everyone wants to talk about her,” she answered while motioning to a chair. “Mostly they want dirt.”

  “Do you have any?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Good for you. How long have you known the representative?”

  “Since college,” Meghan replied.

  “Are you working on her campaign?”

  Meghan shook her head. “Not this time. The House Information Office is a bipartisan organization. As director I am not allowed to become involved in any election campaign, local or otherwise,” she said, then returned to the subject. “Isn’t Joseph Sherman in prison?”

  “No, he’s out. And he might be involved in a murder. Did the St. Paul police speak with you?”

  Again Meghan shook her head, repeating the word “murder” as if she never heard it before.

  “The police didn’t contact you?”

  “No, of course not. Why would they?”

  “Standard procedure. Man just out of prison, on the run, he tends to look up his friends.”

  “Mr. Taylor, I assure you, Joseph Sherman and I were not friends. He was merely a neighbor.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Most drunks love to talk …”

  “He didn’t talk to me. Sherman lived across the corridor, that’s all. I’d see him a few times coming or going, nod, make a remark about the weather—nothing more than that. After he was arrested an assistant county attorney deposed me. It was my impression that he wanted someone to say disparaging things about Sherman on the witness stand, only I couldn’t tell him anything I haven’t just told you. I had no interest in Joseph Sherman or his problems. I didn’t feel sorry for him. I didn’t feel anything toward him at all.”

  “That’s interesting,” I told her, and I meant it.

  “How so?” she replied, ready to defend her coldheartedness.

  “My impression is that you and C. C. Monroe are friends?”

  “Carol Catherine’s friends never call her C. C.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Why? Are you her friend?”

  I ignored the retort and continued my supposition: “You lived across the hall from Joseph Sherman. Joseph Sherman was convicted of killing Terrance Friedlander, thus making it possible for your friend to be elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives. Yet, you had no interest in him at all.”

  “Is there a point to this?”

  “Like I said, I find it interesting.”

  Meghan Chakolis reached behind her, picked up a telephone and slammed it down on the desk in front of me.

  “Call the local TV stations; tell them what you find interesting. Fifteen minutes of fame comes cheap these days,” she said. Then she threw me out of the office.

  FIVE

  C.C. MONROE’S campaign headquarters was located on Rice Street within easy walking distance from the State Capitol. I took my own sweet time getting there—no sharp turns, no speeding through yellow stoplights, staying in plain sight of the blue Ford.

  Headquarters was an abandoned women’s clothing store with posters on the windows urging citizens to vOTE FOR THE FUTURE, VOTE MONROE FOR GOVERNOR. A row of four cafeteria tables and metal chairs looked out the windows onto Rice Street, a dozen push-button telephones spread out over the tables. Another row of tables with telephones lined the far wall. Between them was a low platform. Hanging from the wall behind the platform was an American flag, the Minnesota state flag and a poster of C. C. Monroe looking washed out next to the real thing.

  Carol Catherine Monroe, surrounded by TV lights, cameras, microphones and a dozen or more reporters all shouting out questions, stood alone on the platform. She was the only person in the crowded room who noticed when I walked in; everyone else was watching her. She smiled at me, and I smiled back.

  Good Lord, she was pretty—photogenic, as the man said. The camera loved her, loved her aquamarine eyes, loved her butterscotch hair, unblemished skin, thin waist and long, curvy legs. Which helped explain why the newspapers, weekly tabloids and magazines printed so many pictures of her cutting ribbons or delivering addresses, why such a high percentage of her sound bites made the evening news. That and her sharp tongue. When a member of the opposing party criticized her health care plan because of the expense, C. C. laughed and shouted, “Put another quarter in the jukebox, baby, ’cuz we’ve heard that song before.” Not exactly “Where’s the beef?” but for weeks afterward even the local ballplayers repeated the line.

  “At least St. Paul’s mayor paid child support,” C. C. said in a clear, unwavering voice, answering a reporter’s question. “He did not abandon the child as so many other men have in similar situations. He did not run from his responsibility. For that I think he should be commended. As for the rest, fathering a child while married to another woman, keeping the existence of the child secret”—C. C. shook her head just enough for her long, butterscotch hair to brush both cheeks—”I have no comment. If the people of Minnesota believe those actions make him unfit to govern this great state, they will say so in November. I leave it to them. I will say this, however: For The Cities Reporter to print the mayor’s personal income tax information without his consent is the height of journalistic irresponsibility. I think the media have a lot of soul-searching to do.”

  One reporter in the back corrected her, reminding C. C. that The Cities Reporter did not print the mayor’s income tax records but merely asserted that the reason the mayor refused to release them, unlike the governor and herself, was because they would prove he was supporting an illegitimate child.

  “That kind of hair-splitting rationale might impress First Amendment scholars, Mr. Sheehan, bu
t the people know an invasion of privacy when they see it,” she scolded him. Sheehan grinned and recorded the quote in his reporter’s notebook.

  “Beautiful,” I said, not even thinking about C. C.’s looks.

  A woman of about twenty turned and shushed me, her index finger pressed to her lips. A man stepped next to me, his mouth curled in a snarl. He also was young, tall and blond, with a thick neck and a too-tight sports jacket that threatened to rip when he flexed his muscles—the result of too much time in the weight room, I reckoned. He reminded me of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian, only with better teeth. I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back.

  C. C. continued to excoriate the media for “gutterizing” the campaign, to the applause of her supporters and indifference of the reporters until Sheehan asked if “family values” weren’t important, especially given the importance of the office for which she, the governor and the mayor were contesting. C. C. allowed that they were. Then, Sheehan continued, wasn’t it the responsibility of the media to print the mayor’s story?

  “To me, the timing of the whole thing makes it sorry journalism,” she said. “This isn’t a campaign story. It is a campaign rumor story. It has allegations, but no proof. Should it be printed? Probably—on the day after the election.”

  “You say that even though it may very well get you elected?” Sheehan asked.

  C. C. paused, took a deep breath and answered, “It is the people who will elect me to office, Mr. Sheehan, not your newspaper. Especially not your newspaper.”

  More applause. And why not? C. C. Monroe was putting on a clinic: “Politics 101—How To Exploit Your Opponents’ Personal Problems Without Looking Like It.”

  “Impressive,” I said.

  “Isn’t she?” the young woman replied, not knowing sarcasm when she heard it.

  “Do you believe these allegations will be a major topic of the debate tonight?” another reporter asked.

  C. C. hesitated, looked reflective, then answered, “I certainly hope not. The League of Women Voters organized the debate and public television agreed to broadcast it so that the voters could hear our positions on the key issues. That is why I entered the campaign as a third-party candidate, to force the other candidates to focus on the issues—issues like health care, poverty, our schools, women’s rights. I would be greatly disappointed if these allegations distracted us.”

  The young woman announced to me, “Representative Monroe is going to be governor. The first woman governor in the history of Minnesota.”

  “Sure about that?” I asked her.

  “Who’s going to stop her? The governor? Golly, he had to go through seventeen ballots just to get the endorsement of his own party.”

  Golly? Did people still use that word?

  “It’s amazing the good things that happen to C. C.,” I said as if I actually knew what I was talking about.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Conan asked.

  “First Joseph Sherman, now this,” I answered.

  The young woman flinched visibly, as if someone had pricked her with a pin. Conan crowded in close, giving me a good whiff of his mouthwash.

  “Whaddyawant?” he asked.

  “I would like to speak to Representative Monroe.”

  “Try again,” Conan said, nudging me toward the door.

  I feinted right and curled left, stepping around him, and addressed the young woman. She had seated herself behind the cafeteria table she used as a desk, stacked as it was with a pile of campaign brochures, a thick message pad, two number-two pencils and a telephone switchboard. Below the table were two boxes, one on each side of her chair, which she used for file drawers. She nudged one with her foot as I handed her my card. She took it reluctantly. When she read it, her face became a black and white photograph, all the color drained out. I don’t know why. It merely read: HOLLAND TAYLOR, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS and listed my office address and phone number. There were no bullet holes, no bloodstains.

  The young woman showed the card to Conan, who glanced at it over her shoulder. “He’s trying to cause trouble,” he said. “I’ll take care of him.”

  I held up one finger when he came toward me. “If you so much as breathe on me, one of us is going through the window.” Before he could decide which one, I pointed at the TV journalists who were now packing up their gear. “What kind of trouble do you think that will cause?”

  Conan hesitated, then looked at the young woman for help. She ran her hand through her short brown hair. “I’ll get Marion,” she said.

  I smiled at him when the young woman left her post at the reception desk. “What do you bench? Two-fifty?”

  “Screw you,” he said, apparently insulted.

  We both watched the receptionist snake through the crowd and tap the shoulder of a rather shabbily dressed woman standing next to the platform. Surrounded by several campaign workers, she watched and listened intently as C. C. spoke casually with the boys and girls of the press who did not seem to mind at all that just moments before she had impugned their integrity. She looked about fifty-five, slightly shorter than me and a good seventy pounds heavier, with mousy hair, a bit of a mustache and poorly applied makeup. She was not attractive, probably had not been attractive when she was young, and now didn’t give a damn. She took my card from the receptionist, asking a question while she read it. The receptionist pointed at me and the older woman nodded. She said something and motioned with her head toward a closed door about as far away from the reporters as possible. The receptionist gestured for me to follow her. Conan didn’t like it, but he did nothing to block my path.

  Behind the door was a small office, a temporary affair decorated with a government-gray metal desk and chairs and a dozen or more boxes and stacks of campaign posters and stickers. “Ms. Senske said to wait here,” the young receptionist informed me and left.

  I waited alone for fifteen minutes, searching the office to pass the time. There was nothing personal in it, no photographs, no mementos. Finally, the woman entered the room, startling me.

  “Mr. Taylor, I’m Marion Senske,” she said, closing the door behind her. Her manner was brusque, bordering on open hostility. I didn’t mind. I make my living visiting other people’s lives. I visit them at the worst possible times, when they are strung out on fear and doubt. I don’t expect good manners.

  “Miss Monroe will join us in a moment.”

  “Thank you,” I said, without being sure what I was thankful for.

  “May I see your identification, please?”

  She examined it like she was searching for some telltale sign of counterfeiting, actually holding it up to the light. “How long have you been a private investigator?” she asked, tapping the laminated card on her thumb. She had no intention of returning it.

  “Four years,” I admitted. She didn’t applaud. “Would it help that I was a police officer for ten years?”

  “In St. Paul?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excuse me a moment,” Marion said and withdrew from the office with my business ID. She returned ten minutes later and handed back my property.

  “I verified your credentials with my friend in the police department,” she said. “Apparently, you’re well thought of.”

  “By whom?”

  “Lieutenant Anne Scalasi,” she replied, emphasizing lieutenant.

  “Anne Scalasi?” I repeated, trying hard to mask my absolute astonishment. I don’t think I did a very good job of it. Marion double-clutched before settling into her chair.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked after a brief pause.

  “I’m looking for a man named Joseph Sherman.”

  “Who’s Joseph Sherman?”

  “Murder suspect.”

  Marion leaned toward me. “Who did he kill?”

  “I think he killed a man named John Brown.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “‘John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in his grave’?” I recited. Marion was not am
used.

  “What has this to do with us?”

  “Has Sherman contacted Miss Monroe?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Mind if I ask her that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Tough,” I said.

  Marion sprang to her feet. I flinched, gripping the arm of the chair, feeling like the spectators around the lion cage who take a step backward whenever a big cat approaches the bars—safe but stupid.

  “Carol Catherine Monroe is a gubernatorial candidate,” Marion intoned carefully, as if the words could conjure a magic spell.

  “I can ask her in private or I can ask her in public,” I said.

  “You still haven’t told me what Sherman has to do with us,” Marion said, reclaiming her seat if not her composure.

  “If Joseph Sherman had not killed Terrance Friedlander, C. C. Monroe might still be working for the Department of Transportation.”

  “Oh God, now I remember,” Marion muttered to herself, then said aloud, “If Sirhan Sirhan had not killed Bobby Kennedy, Richard Nixon might be working for the Department of Transportation. Now, for the last time, what has this to do with us?”

  “Damned if I know,” I admitted, recalling the receptionist’s reaction to Sherman’s name.

  Marion Senske settled back into her chair and brushed the tiny hairs above her upper lip with an index finger, studying me like a chess player regarding an unexpected move. “Lieutenant Scalasi didn’t send you, did she?”