High Crimes

“But I’ll tell you the truth,” Devereaux said somberly. “I always thought Tom was a little too smooth for his own good, but he’s your husband, so I gotta side with him. When the government starts gathering its forces to go after one guy, you gotta believe they’re trying to hide something, too.”

That evening, as she was trying to convince Annie that it was bedtime, the phone rang.

She recognized the voice right away: Julia Margolis, the wife of her closest friend on the Harvard faculty, Abe Margolis, who taught constitutional law. “Claire?” she said in her big contralto. “Where are you? You’re an hour and a half late — is everything all right?”

“An hour — oh my God. You invited us for dinner tonight. Oh, shit, Julia. I’m so sorry, I totally forgot about it.”

“Are you sure you’re all right? That’s not like you at all.” Julia Margolis was a large and still very beautiful brunette in her late fifties, a great cook and an even greater hostess.

“I’ve been insanely busy,” Claire said, then revised that: “Tom had to go out of town on business suddenly, and I feel like everything’s falling down around me.”

“Well, I’ve had the swordfish marinating for something like two days, and I really hate to waste it. Why don’t you come over now?”

“I’m sorry, Julia. I really am. Rosa’s gone home, and I don’t have a sitter, and I’m just frantic. Please forgive me.”

“Of course, dear. But when things settle down, will you call me? We’d love to see you two.”

10

Later that evening Claire and Jackie sat in the downstairs study, in paired, slightly weathered French leather club chairs. Tom had spent two months searching for the perfect chairs for Claire’s office, because she’d once admired them in a Ralph Lauren ad. Finally he’d located a dealer in New York who imported them from the Paris flea market. They’d gone from a Paris nightclub in the twenties to Cambridge in the late nineties, and they were still magnificently comfortable.

Jackie again wore black jeans and a black T-shirt. Paint spatters freckled her shirt and arms: she was a painter who earned her living as a technical writer. Claire was still wearing her blue suit, a Chanel knockoff but a nice one, because she hadn’t had a minute to change. She was exhausted and her head ached and her neck and shoulders felt stiff. All she wanted to do right now was run a nice hot bath and soak in it for an hour.

The room glowed amber as the sun set.

“Ray Devereaux says Tom used to be some kind of clandestine army operative who got entangled in something,” Jackie said. “Jesus. You think Ray’s information is good?”

“He’s usually reliable. Always has been.”

“So what do you think, he did something for the government, the Pentagon, something undercover, and maybe he got into trouble? And... and he goes AWOL, just takes off, and he goes into hiding and changes his name, and then he moves to Boston and goes into business and hopes he never gets caught? And then, one day, by coincidence, your house is broken into and the cops run his prints, and bingo, the Pentagon’s found him? Is that how it goes?”

“Basically, yeah.” Claire turned to see whether Jackie was being ironic, or simply skeptical, but she wasn’t. She was thinking out loud, as she so often did.

“Hard to get a job with a firm if you have no references for them to check into,” Jackie went on, “so he starts his own business, and that way he doesn’t have people checking too deeply into his background.”

Claire closed her eyes again, nodded.

“So everything you know about Tom is a lie,” Jackie suggested gently.

“Maybe not everything. A lot. An enormous amount.”

Very softly, Jackie said, “But you feel betrayed. It’s, like, custom-made to rip your heart out.”

Tears came to Claire’s eyes, tears of frustration and exhaustion rather than of sadness. “Is it a betrayal if he’s escaping, hiding?”

“He lied to you, Claire. He never told you about it. He’s not who he told you he was. A man who can lie about his life, create a whole fake background, is a man who can lie about anything.”

“He contacted me again, Jacks.”

“How?”

“We don’t know if there are bugs here,” Claire said, pointing at the ceiling, although who knew where listening devices might be planted?

“Well, what are you going to do?” Jackie asked, but then the doorbell rang. They looked at each other. Now who could it be? Claire got up reluctantly and went to the front door.

It was a young guy in his early twenties, with a scuzzy goatee and a brass stud earring in his left ear, wearing bicycle shorts and a leather jacket. “Boston Messengers,” he announced.

Claire looked past him to see two Crown Victorias parked at the curb in front of their house. Passengers in both vehicles were staring at the visitor.

“Are you Claire Chapman?”

Claire nodded, alert.

“Jesus, lady, those guys out there stopped me and asked me a million questions, who am I and what am I doing here — you got something going on in here? You in some sort of trouble? ’Cause I don’t want trouble.”

“What are you doing here?” Claire demanded.