“She didn’t start it. Welles did. Do you think I blamed her?”
“Didn’t you?”
“No.” He paused. “At first, yes, of course. But I never wanted her dead.”
“Somebody did,” Molly said.
In the silence, Nick saw his father hold her eyes, debating.
“Yes,” he said finally. “Somebody did.”
The answer rattled her. Not an admission. An invitation to join sides, in the open.
“But not you,” she pressed.
“Why would I?” his father said calmly. “By that time it didn’t matter what she said. I was gone. Why would I want such a thing? A terrible death like that.”
“But so convenient.”
“Not for me,” he said, checking her.
“For everyone,” Molly said. “No more names. It must have been a relief. For everyone, I guess, except Welles. She was his only witness. Not so convenient for him.”
He stared at her, waiting, then moved. “Unless she was going to change her testimony.”
His voice, so reasonable, stopped her. She looked at him, surprised, as if he had turned the board around. “Why would she do that?”
“It’s possible. It would have been the easiest thing to do. It’s what I would have advised, if I’d been handling it,” his father said, a lawyer walking her through it. “She thought she’d recognized me, but now she wasn’t sure. It might have been somebody else. She couldn’t swear under oath. She wouldn’t want to do that, make a mistake. She’d been so nervous when they first talked to her-” He broke off, looking at Molly, who had sat back, letting him lead. “She was young, you know, younger than you are now. They were already worried about her. Communists weren’t supposed to be young and pretty, not real ones. She was just an impressionable girl-they took advantage of people like that. She didn’t know what she was doing, and when the committee first talked to her, she panicked. But now — Anyway, she could have done it. Of course, he’d still have her, but what was that worth? You didn’t get elected by locking up salesgirls, not when you promised a conspiracy. If he could lock her up. He knew about her, but how much? Enough to convict? I’m not sure. She might have walked away. And that would have ruined everything, made him look-unreliable. No conspiracy. So maybe it was convenient for him. With her gone, the smear would stand-I’d always be guilty, at least in the press, which is what mattered. The court of public opinion, always his favorite. You don’t have to prove anything there. You can build a career on it. But then I got away, so he ended up with nothing.” He glanced pointedly at Molly. “That was the only satisfaction.”
Molly said nothing, turning it over, and Nick saw that his father had shifted things again, that the story, just the possibility of it, was a kind of reproach.
“Of course, we’ll never know what she intended to do,” his father said.
Molly looked at him steadily, still examining the brief. “But why do that-to save you?”
“No. Herself.”
“Then why go to Welles in the first place? She was his witness.”
He looked at her curiously. “But she didn’t go to him. He went to her. She wasn’t an informer, you know. Did you think that?” he said, then shook his head. “She wasn’t the type. It was Welles. He hounded her until he got a name.”
“Yours.”
“Yes, mine. One. If she’d been a friendly witness, she’d have told him everything she knew. Why volunteer if you weren’t going to talk? Look at Bentley, or-who was the other one? Coplon. They couldn’t stop. She never wanted any of it-you could see it in her face. She was afraid of him. She made a bargain, and then she saw it wasn’t a bargain. He’d never let her alone. With that press? She was all he had. He had to keep squeezing. Once he knew about her-”
“How did he, if she didn’t tell him?” Nick asked.
His father nodded as if they’d finally arrived. “Well, that’s the great question. How did they know about anything? Hearing after hearing. Where did it all come from?”
“If you throw enough mud, some of it sticks,” Molly said.
“But how do you know where to throw? Where did Welles get his information?” He turned to Nick. “What does Wiseman say?”
“FBI files, usually.”
“Yes, usually. Hoover. Our own Dzerzhinsky. Helpful to a fault. As long as someone else took the credit. Which of course they were eager to do. Welles, the great inquisitor. Or McCarthy, when he was sober. Where would either of them have been without those files? There was plenty of mud there to go around.”
“And Hoover supplied it,” Molly said skeptically.
