Penance Read online

  “Ms. Senske said I was supposed to take care of you,” the receptionist informed me.

  In my younger days while chasing the women at St. Thomas, I probably would have made something of that remark. But I was well past that. I call it maturity. Others call it old age. “Let’s get something to eat,” I said.

  She hesitated, then said, “I’m not allowed to leave the phones unattended.”

  “Isn’t there someone who can relieve you?” She inspected me cautiously for a moment. I added, “There’s a Vietnamese restaurant just down the street.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “It’s a public place and I promise to keep my hands in my pockets.”

  She weighed the invitation a moment longer, then called, “Louise!” An older woman answered from across the room. “Could you catch the phones?” the receptionist asked. “I’m going to get something to eat.”

  “Of course, dear.”

  “I’ll be back before the debate begins.”

  “No problem, dear,” Louise said, but from her expression I guessed there must be at least one. She looked at me like she was sighting down the barrel of a rifle.

  The receptionist fished a purse from a box under the cafeteria table and moved toward the door. She was about five-three and wore a white blouse with a lace collar and pocket, pleated trousers with a high waist and white sneakers. I didn’t particularly care for the sneakers. I know professional women like to wear them on the job because they’re infinitely more comfortable than traditional heels. Still, they look childish when matched with business clothes and women have enough problems in the workplace as it is.

  “My name is Amy Lamb,” she said.

  “Hi, Amy,” I replied, holding out my hand in the traditional fashion, proving there was no weapon in it. She gave it a brief squeeze.

  “Do you carry a gun?” Amy Lamb asked between mouthfuls of chicken almond ding and fried rice.

  “No.”

  “Really? I thought all private eyes carried guns.”

  “Some do. Usually they lock them away in the trunks of their cars.”

  “How much does a private eye make?” she asked, sipping her tea.

  “Depends on how much you work. Some of the larger shops charge thirty-five dollars an hour. I get four hundred dollars a day but …”

  “Four hundred? No shit?” she said and then clamped her hand hard over her mouth.

  “I don’t work every day,” I finished.

  She blushed a deep crimson. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I never cursed before I moved down here.”

  “I’ve heard worse.”

  “I’m from Starbuck. Starbuck, Minnesota. Ever hear of it?”

  “Sure,” I answered. I knew my state map. I could even recite the names of all eighty-seven counties in alphabetic order: Aitkin, Anoka, Becker, Beltrami …

  “It’s about two hours’ driving time from here,” Amy volunteered in case I was fooling. She spoke with the sing-song voice of adolescence, each sentence tailing up, ending with a question mark. She was much younger than I had originally guessed, younger perhaps than her professed chronological age of twenty. I found myself comparing her to the girl who’d sat in front of me in high school algebra, who’d scribbled her name, house number, street, town, county, state, country and then—to be exact—continent, hemisphere, planet, solar system, galaxy, and universe into her notebook, indicating exactly where she belonged in the scope of things. Try as I might, I could not picture Amy waging a social revolution with the women at St. Thomas, although it was probably for her that they fought.

  “I really liked it,” she said of her hometown.

  “Why did you leave?” I asked.

  “It was kinda small—not much opportunity, you know? And then, after I was graduated from school, well, my parents, they were concerned about me, wondering when I was gonna get married. We’d be at the dinner table and after Daddy said grace it would begin: ‘When are you going to get married?’ ‘When are you going to settle down?’ My parents were convinced that if I didn’t get married soon all the nice boys would be taken and I’d be stuck with what was left. Y’see, in a small town like Starbuck, you turn eighteen you either go away to school or you get married, and I wasn’t, you know, college material. But I wanted more than just getting married and spending every second Saturday at the Pope County Dairy Association dinner. So, what I did, I went to the community college in Morris and studied to be a legal secretary. I figured I could go to the Cities and get a job. Boy, that freaked ’em—my parents, I mean. My father would cut articles out of the StarTribune, articles about, you know, rape and murder and stuff. Remember when that serial killer was stalking those poor Indian women? My father cut out the articles and taped them to the refrigerator door. ‘See what happens?’ he’d say. But a woman, you know, you gotta be free, so after I got my certificate, I just hopped on that Greyhound. Mom cried, but Dad, Dad was cool; kinda surprised me. He slipped me a whole thousand dollars and said I was to call every other day or he’d come down and get me. I think he might have cried, too.”

  “Parents,” I said, as if the word contained all the mysteries of the ages. “So what happens next?”

  “I’m going to get a job with the state, once Representative Monroe is elected governor, I mean. When Ms. Senske hired me, she said do a good job and she and Representative Monroe would find a place for me after the election—me and Galen. Are you married?”

  “No,” I said, without elaborating. “Who’s Galen?”

  “I don’t mean to pry or anything, but you seem so much more mature than most of the men I meet.”

  “You mean old,” I corrected her.

  “You’re not so old,” she said, flirting now.

  “Trust me.”

  “I dated an older man before and it was no big deal,” Amy assured me. “I find older men kinda attractive, you know?”

  “Who’s Galen?” I asked again.

  “You don’t like me,” Amy pouted.

  “Sure, I do,” I told her honestly. “You’re a beautiful, desirable young woman. Only I have a high school yearbook that’s older than you. Besides,” I said, leaning in close, whispering, “we’re not allowed to get romantically involved with clients. The state could take my license.”

  “Really?” she whispered. “You mean like psychologists?”

  I nodded and Amy glanced about the restaurant in case anyone was watching. She raised her hand shoulder high like she was swearing herself to secrecy, looked around some more and said, “Galen? Galen Pivec? You asked about him? He’s with the State Capitol police. He provides security ’n’ stuff for Representative Monroe in his free time; you know, crowd control, drives sometimes. You met him this afternoon.”

  “Conan?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Are you and Galen friends?”

  “I guess. We talk a lot while he’s waiting at the door—you know, waiting for Representative Monroe and Ms. Senske. But we don’t date or anything,” she added quickly, looking into my eyes, hoping I believed her.

  I had a thought, but pushed it out of my mind, ashamed of myself.

  “How do you get to be a private eye?” Amy asked.

  “You have enough hours of experience, you can take out a license. If you don’t, you can apprentice under someone else’s license until you do.”

  “Did you apprentice?”

  “I was a cop for ten years,” I said and handed her my photostat just in case she thought I was making it all up.

  She examined the photograph, looked at me, looked back at the photograph.

  “Some people say I look like Alan Ladd,” I said.

  “Who’s he?”

  “An actor. He was pretty big in the forties and fifties.”

  “Louise would know him—if he was an actor in the fifties, I mean.”

  “Louise?” I asked.

  “The woman who took over the phones? I used to live with
her. She was the office administrator at the law firm where Marion—I mean Ms. Senske—used to work. I applied for this job as a legal secretary—that’s what I am, really, a legal secretary, not a receptionist; I told you that, I think …”

  I nodded, confirming that she had.

  “Anyway, the day I arrived here, I got a copy of the newspaper, the classifieds, and started looking for a job. My first interview was with Louise and I guess she liked me right off, only she said she had to interview two or three more people before making a decision and I should leave my address and phone number and I told her I was staying at this motel near the bus station? Know what she did? She said, ‘That’s outrageous,’ and she made me get my stuff and check out and she moved me into her place. She said it was only temporary and she made me pay room and board, you know, but I had my own bedroom and I could come and go as I pleased and it was pretty okay, until …” Amy Lamb’s mood darkened, her voice along with it. “I just had to leave.”

  “I can understand that,” I told her, thinking that I really did.

  “Can you?”

  “I think everybody should live alone for at least a year. That’s how you find out who you are.”

  “Or aren’t,” Amy added.

  I shrugged.

  “Anyway, Ms. Senske asked Louise if she wanted to work on the campaign and Louise asked me and here we all are.”

  “Just one big, happy family.”

  “Oh, it is, it really is,” Amy replied and ate another mouthful of fried rice. “It seems everyone is related to somebody, or a friend of somebody. Are you related to Representative Monroe?”

  “No.”

  “What are you doing for her?”

  “This and that.”

  “Is it confidential?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” she said, disappointed.

  “But maybe you can help me.”

  “Really? Can I?”

  “Do you know a man named Dennis Thoreau? He was around the campaign the past couple of weeks.”

  “I know him,” she said in a voice that made me think she didn’t care much for him.

  “And?”

  “We went out once,” Amy confessed. “He was the older man I told you about.”

  “What happened?”

  Amy lowered her head and picked at her rice with chopsticks. Finally she said, “Let’s just say he didn’t treat me very well and let it go at that.”

  “Did he telephone Representative Monroe a couple times Saturday?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Do all the calls go through you?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  I had to think about that for a minute. “Did you ever meet Joseph Sherman?”

  “Him,” Amy answered without hesitation. “No, I never met him but he must have called a hundred times. He wasn’t very nice, either. He used the ‘F’ word a lot. He kept calling and saying he wanted to speak to Miss Monroe but wouldn’t tell me what it was about, so I wouldn’t put him through; I just took his name and number. I’m very careful about that. You’d be surprised how many crank calls Representative Monroe gets.”

  “I can imagine. Did Sherman ever get through to C. C.?”

  “Oh, yes. Representative Monroe was standing by the desk this one time when he called and she heard me talking to him and she took the phone.”

  “Do you remember what was said?”

  “I don’t know what he said. I couldn’t hear and, you know, I was trying not to eavesdrop.”

  “What did C. C. say?”

  “She said a lot of umm’s and uh-huh’s and I see’s and stuff like that and then she said, ‘Go ahead, call the police, call the newspapers, I don’t care,’ and then she gave me the phone and I hung up and I asked, you know, ’cuz I was concerned, I asked if there was a problem, and she said, ‘It seems like every man in the world wants a piece of me,’ and then she left.”

  “Was she upset?”

  “Not really. She was smiling when she walked away.”

  “When did the conversation take place?”

  “I don’t know. Thursday, Friday … no, Thursday last week. Is that helpful?”

  “Very,” I said, not knowing if it was or not.

  “If there is anything else I can do—” Amy offered, excited at the prospect.

  I slipped a card out of my wallet and gave it to her. “You never know.”

  EIGHT

  BACK AT campaign headquarters, one of the cafeteria tables had been dragged from the wall to the middle of the room and a space had been cleared for a twenty-six-inch Magnavox. The TV was tuned to Channel 2 and already a dozen or more volunteers were gathered around it, although it was broadcasting the final minutes of a national news magazine—their heroine was still a quarter hour away. The other volunteers were working the phones, soliciting donations and reminding supporters to watch.

  There was an energy coursing through the room that I could not define. Tension, anxiety, pure joy; all of the above. Everyone was smiling, everyone seemed to be feeding off everyone else’s adrenaline. I had felt that energy only once before: while walking through the concourse at the Metrodome during the ’87 World Series, before Kent Hrbek launched his grand salami into the right-field seats and every soul in Minnesota realized that this time—unlike four Super Bowls, two Stanley Cups and two presidential elections—this time we would not lose.

  I sat with Amy Lamb on one of the cafeteria tables, watching the screen, our legs dangling over the edge, Amy gripping my arm. There was no romance in her touch. Still, I found myself wishing I had pumped more iron. Louise sat on the other side of me, keeping her hands to herself. I could not determine her age—anywhere from mid-thirties to late-fifties. Her brown hair was streaked with gray and pulled tight into a bun, her eyes were old and her face was lined. She might have been handsome once, but life had not been kind. She glanced at Amy’s hands and then at me. Her expression was not kind, either.

  The moderator, a local news anchor known more for her hairstyle than her competence, introduced the panel of questioners, local journalists all, none of whom was known to me. Then she introduced the candidates, eliciting deep-throated boos from the campaign volunteers for the governor and the mayor and a hearty cheer for C. C. One woman remarked that the governor’s hair seemed to be getting darker the older he got, quipping that “fifteen years ago, it was gray.” A young man noticed that both the governor and mayor were dressed nearly exactly the same; even their ties were identical. “They must shop the same place as my old man,” he said. Louise noted how well dressed Representative Monroe was in a paisley two-piece dress that combined red, burgundy, purple and black against an olive background. A gold locket hung from a gold chain around her neck; her rich, butterscotch hair was swept back.

  I laughed but no one else got the joke. And then all was quiet. At the Metrodome, we had never stopped screaming. Here, all voices were mute and the few that were compelled to comment were shushed into silence. The volume was cranked and the volunteers leaned forward.

  The governor made his opening remarks, stressing lower taxes, lower taxes, lower taxes. Then the mayor’s turn came and he themed jobs, jobs, jobs as the cornerstone of his campaign. Then it was C. C.’s turn, but she did not speak. Instead she stared, seemingly bewildered, moving her gaze from one candidate to the other until, prompted by the moderator, she said, “I can’t believe what I just heard. Lower taxes? More jobs? Governor, you raised income taxes, property taxes and gasoline taxes twice each in the past twelve years. Mr. Mayor, the city of St. Paul has lost over twenty-one thousand jobs during your watch. Gentlemen, what are you talking about?”

  The volunteers cheered. The studio audience cheered, despite warnings not to. I suspect my mom and dad in Fort Myers, Florida, would’ve cheered, too, had they seen the show. Carol Catherine Monroe had drawn first blood big time. The governor and mayor, visibly irritated, came after her with a vengeance. It was a mistake. C. C. parried each personal attack and thrust back
with a carefully worded reply: “It is true, Governor, I only have a few years’ experience but I have a balanced checkbook. You on the other hand have three decades of experience and the state is half a billion dollars in debt. How do you explain that?” and “Mr. Mayor, obviously I am a woman so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I am interested in what you keep referring to as ‘women’s issues.’ Do you have a problem with that? Do you think women’s issues are unimportant?” And my favorite: “Gentlemen, why do you keep referring to my age and the fact I am single? Are you looking for a date?”

  Representative Carol Catherine Monroe had caught her opponents off guard. Clearly, they had underestimated her. Still, they were seasoned politicians, and as the debate progressed they started getting in licks of their own.

  The mayor accused C. C. of being merely a dupe of the “femi-liberals,” and claimed she was “the puppet,” and “Marion Senske, that well-known liberal anarchist, the puppet master.” The governor joined the attack, suggesting that Marion had authored all the bills C. C. proposed in the House, none of which had passed. C. C. responded only by confessing that Marion was her friend and mentor, proclaiming gratefully that “while she never put words in my mouth, she has put ideas in my head.”

  With a quarter hour left in the debate, C. C.’s opponents continued to hammer her relentlessly, first the governor, then the mayor, then the governor again, talking about what was needed at the capitol, or rather, what was not needed: a young, single, tax-and-spend liberal feminist known only for her good looks, who appealed solely to a left-wing constituency that consisted mostly of welfare queens, tree huggers and homosexuals. The moderator eventually interrupted the attack and gave C. C. time for a rebuttal. C. C. attempted to speak, but her words were incomprehensible. She stopped herself, pounded the podium, then tried again. “I thought we were here to discuss the issues,” she muttered. And then she committed the one unpardonable sin of politics: She cried. Her chest heaved and shuddered and she began to weep plaintive, doleful tears. Her voice cracked and disintegrated. She lowered her head and closed her eyes.