Page 128 of Never Flinch

Barbara:Pick her up there at 5:30 she said and bring her to the Garden City Plaza. She’s got a special ride to Dingley Park in some fancy convertible. I think with the mayor. She says you should come with!

Jerome:OK. BTW you look great in those tight pants.

Barbara:Shut up.

Jerome texts John Ackerly, asking if he’s still up.

John:Sure. Went to a meeting. Now watching the Cavs.

Jerome:Me too. Game sucks.

John:Totally.

Jerome:Can I pick you up at 5 PM tomorrow? Then U drive my car to the field?

John:OK, I’m there. Pick me up at Happy.

The Cavs are getting their shit handed to them on the West Coast. Jerome turns off the TV and goes to bed.

Chapter 20

1

5:30 AM.

Holly doesn’t sleep well unless she’s in her own bed, and the stress of being Kate’s security has further unbalanced her sleep cycle. She’s awake before dawn but forces herself to lie quiet and do her morning meditations before getting up. When those are finished, she checks her phone and finds two new texts.

John:I went to a meeting in Upsala last night. 2 old guys remembered Trig. No descriptions worth beans. Guy was white, had a beard, shaved it at some point. Called himself Trig or sometimes Trigger, like Roy Rogers’s horse (?). A few times, maybe early in sobriety, he might have called himself by his real name, which could have been John. Or Ron. Or Don. Or maybe Lon as in Chaney bwa-ha-ha. I’ll try again next week.

Izzy:Praying for rain so game will be canceled.

Holly goes to the window and pulls open the drapes. The sun is coming up and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. She textsThank you keep me informedto John Ackerly. To Izzy:Looks like you’re out of luck.

This turns out to be so true, Boo.

2

There’s a Starbucks down the street from the hotel. Holly gets a caffè Americano and a breakfast sandwich. She loves the way coffee brings the morning world into focus. Loves mornings, period. It’s when she feels most herself. She walks the seven blocks to Dingley Park to look at the field where her friend will find either glory or shame tonight (probably an exaggeration, but she’s full of coffee). The bleachers now are empty, the foul lines scuffed almost to invisibility. She sits on the bottom bleacher for awhile, feeling the first sun warm her face, digging the day. A young man in a headscarf and tattered jeans bops up to her and asks if she has any spare change. Holly gives him a fivespot. He tells her thanks, ma’am, and gives her a soul shake before she can protest. When he’s gone, she uses her hand sanitizer, sits awhile longer, and strolls back to the hotel, stopping on the way back to pick up—O rare luxury—an actual print newspaper.

This is the best part of the day, she thinks.Hold onto it a little.Except, of course, it’s like the poet says: nothing gold can stay. As a seasoned investigator, she knows this.

3

In her room, she checks for fresh messages (none), reads her newspaper, and brews another cup of coffee (not as good as Starbucks but passable). At eight-thirty she knocks lightly on the door of Kate’s suite. Both women are there. Kate is making notes for a speech she won’t, as it happens, be giving. Corrie is on the phone in the suite’s bedroom, working out logistics for Pittsburgh, the next stop on the tour. Kate is scheduled to speak at the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall, but given the way things have snowballed, that venue’s now too small, and the PPG Paints Arena, which seats almost twenty thousand, is too big. Corrie tells whoever she’s talking to that she doesn’t want Kate to see a lot of empty seats. Listening to her, Holly thinks she really might be a presidential-level chief of staff someday.

“I’m going over to the Mingo to look around,” Holly tells Kate. “Scope the place out. Do you need anything?”

“Nope.”

“Please stay in the room until I come back. A few eBayers and right-to-lifers have already arrived.”

“Yes, Mom,” Kate says without looking up, and Holly realizes—with a kind of comic despair—that Kate will do exactly what she wants.

Holly pilots her Chrysler to the Mingo Auditorium and parks next to the Transit van. She has phoned ahead, and the Program Director’s assistant, Maisie Rogan, is there to let her in.

“The boss isn’t here yet, but I expect him by ten or so.”

“Don’t need him,” Holly says. “Just want a look around.”

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