Hide & Seek - James Patterson [25]
Book Two
Calm Before the Storm
CHAPTER 24
IT WAS ONE of the earliest court appointments—I don't remember which. All I know was that I was so glad to be leaving prison for any reason, even just to travel back and forth to court.
I felt that I was wearing my scarlet M, of course. I'm innocent, until proven guilty, but not in the minds of an awful lot of people, or so I've found. People who don't know me have already prejudged and condemned me.
For some, I'm guilty of murder. For others, they assume that I must have slept around, though God knows, nothing could be farther from the truth. The worst hurt of all, the deepest wound, comes from those who judge me a bad mother. If they saw me for ten minutes with my children—if they asked my kids about their mother—they'd know how wrong they are.
But I am prejudged. Women, I think, are guilty until proven innocent. And many of the worst accusers are other women. Why is that?
So I wore my scarlet M to court that summer morning. I was just glad to be outside. The pollen count must have been high, since several people we passed on the streets were sneezing, and the parked cars were blanketed with a thin, green dust.
The guards from the prison knew me, and liked me, and they tried to protect me from the inevitable crowds at the courthouse. A few of the “faithful,” “Maggie's mob,” had brought their angry placards. “Maggie Is a Murderer” and “Husband Killer” and “Give Maggie a CHAIR, She Looks Tired From All That Killing.”
“Keep your head down, Maggie, and just follow us straight in,” one of the guards told me.
I had spent so much time inside, cut off from the world, that I wanted to look—but the guard was right. I dropped my head, even though it made me look guilty.
The press was clever; they knew the best places to hide in wait at the courthouse. They trapped us on the way in, then they pounced.
There was the usual barrage of insensitive questions. Microphones thrust at me—did they want me to sing? TV cameras staring with their large, unblinking eyes.
A woman reporter with frazzled blond hair leaned in close over the restraining ropes at the side door. “Maggie! Over here, Maggie. Please?” she pleaded.
My head rose involuntarily, my eyes went to hers.
“What about Patrick?” she suddenly asked, a TV eye mercilessly staring behind her. “Did you murder him too? Did you, Maggie?”
I have never spit at a human being. I don't spit. Ever … but that morning I spat at that reporter. I don't know what possessed me.
The TV camera caught it—the incident, the shot, was on every TV news program, played over and over again. An uncontrollable temper. The real Maggie Bradford?
What about Patrick?
Did you murder a third man, Maggie?
Is anybody going to be surprised if you did?
CHAPTER 25
“ACCOUNTANTS DON'T KNOW shit. So why in hell do we pay them a cent? Now there's some cost savings I could live with!”
Thus spoke Patrick O'Malley, standing in the bathroom of the unfurnished Tower Suite of his unfinished, unnamed, unopened hotel on Sixty-fifth Street and Park Avenue.
He was glaring at his accountant, his C.F.O., Maurice Freund. Freund had heard his boss's opinion of accountants before. “But we do know costs,” he said, unruffled, “and you're costing yourself an unnecessary fortune.”
“Pears soap is necessary,” O'Malley raged. “Porthault towels are necessary. A Jacuzzi in the Tower Suite bathroom is essential.”
Freund sighed and shrugged. “The good news is that every room is booked. The bad news is that we're losing money on every booking.”
“We'll refigure the damn rates. When you promise the best you deliver the best, and this hotel will be the best, goddamnit, or that soap goes right up your ass.”
“As long as it's Pears,” Freund said, grinning.
O'Malley grunted. “The construction's on schedule?”
“Yup. Their schedule. Eight months late at an overrun of twenty percent.”
“That's still less than you estimated originally?”
“Ten percent less.”
“Then take the soap and the towels from that ten percent.”
“No way.” Freund took O'Malley's