The Spoiler by Domenic Stansberry Read Free Book Online Page A

way she pressed her fingers against her thigh—a nervous, absent gesture.
    â€œTell me,” he said, pausing at the open door. “Why bother? Why not just keep it to yourself?”
    She gave him a startled look. “I don’t know, maybe I’m bored,” she said. “Maybe I just want to do the right thing.”
    She touched his arm again, not avoiding his eyes this time but staring straight into them, as if trying to decide whether or not she had made a mistake talking to him. He thought of asking her about the business with Sparks in the parking lot but decided to keep it to himself, at least for now.
    After Lofton had left, Amanti went to the phone and dialed Senator Kelley’s office in Boston. Just as she heard the ringing on the other end of the line, however, she hung up. No, not this time, she thought; he can call me. She went over her conversation with the reporter. He was a disheveled man, who had an odd habit of not seeming to look at you while you spoke, except occasionally, and then very directly, in a way that was disarming and made you wonder if you had said something you hadn’t intended. At such moments, despite his loose, ill-fitting clothes and sloppy manner, he was not bad-looking: dirt-colored olive brown skin, dark eyes, and a nose that looked as if it had been broken, maybe, when he was a kid.
    â€œWe can use him,” Kelley had said, sitting on the edge of her bed. “And he’ll get lost when we want him to—with a little incentive. He’s done the same sort of thing before.”
    She lost patience and called Kelley’s office again. This time she let it ring through. Amanti had talked to the secretary a hundred times over the last four years, left a thousand messages, but she had never seen the woman; she had never been to Kelley’s office. Still, the secretary knows me, Amanti thought; she recognizes my voice, too. “No,” the woman said, “the senator is out of the office. He won’t be back till tomorrow.”
    â€œWhere will he be tonight?”
    â€œHe has an engagement.”
    â€œWith his wife?” Amanti asked. The catch in her voice was barely noticeable.
    The secretary hesitated. “No,” she said at last, “his wife’s at their cottage on the shore.”
    When Kelley called, it was late, past midnight. He asked her about Lofton but only enough to see that everything had gone the way they’d planned. His voice was that of a slightly drunk, happy man, gruff and pleasant, like the sound of a stream rolling over a bed of rough stones. She tried to imagine his face as he spoke, but she couldn’t. It was just his voice, the stream in the darkness: I’ll be out to see you soon, any day now. Amanti wondered where he was at the moment and whom he had been with. He went on talking, the same melodious sound, and finally she saw his face—his black hair and blue eyes—reflected back at her in the running stream.

2
    Early the next morning, before dawn, the fire sirens caterwauled, loud, mournful, insistent, and raised Lofton from his bed. He ran to his window. The roof of the neighboring building was flat, and he could see over it into the street. Down there the cars slowed in the blue air, pulling to the curb, while, for an instant, the engine raced by, its lights flashing red and angry down the alley. Lofton climbed down the fire escape. By the time he reached the street, the engine was gone, but he could still hear it, moving somewhere deeper into the neighborhood. He tried to follow the siren, but suddenly its wailing stopped; the truck parked on some corner he could not find. Up one long, narrow street he saw the glare of a fire, he thought, high in the windows of an apartment building, but closer up he saw the glare was only the reflection of neon from across the street. He stood on the corner, trying to catch his breath. A couple of boys, bandannas around their heads, stood