“So what’s next?” he asked.
“After this?” she said. “Back to New York, I guess. Maybe Washington, D.C. I’m getting interested in policy.”
“You won’t miss this down-and-dirty stuff?”
“I will, probably. And I won’t give it up completely. Maybe I’ll volunteer a few weeks a year. Certainly I’ll try to fund it. That’s where all our money comes from, you know. Big firms in the big cities, with a conscience.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Somebody needs to do something.”
“That’s for sure.”
“What about Hack Walker?” he asked. “Will he make a difference?”
She shrugged at the wheel. “I don’t know him very well. But his reputation is good. And he can’t make things any worse, can he? It’s a really screwed-up system. I mean, I’m a democrat, big D and little d, so theoretically to elect your judges is perfectly fine with me. Theoretically. But in practice, it’s totally out of hand. I mean, what does it cost to run a campaign down here?”
“No idea.”
“Well, figure it out. We’re talking about Pecos County, basically, because that’s where the bulk of the electorate is. A bunch of posters, some newspaper ads, half a dozen homemade commercials on the local TV channels. A market like this, you’d have to work really hard to spend more than five figures. But these guys are all picking up contributions running to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Millions, maybe. And the law says if you don’t get around to spending it, you don’t have to give it back. You just keep it, for miscellaneous future expenses. So what it amounts to is they’re all picking up their bribes in advance. The law firms and the oil people and the special interests are paying now for future help. You can get seriously rich, running for judge in Texas. And if you get elected and do the right things all your years on the bench, you retire straight into some big law partnership and you get asked onto the boards of a half-dozen big companies. So it’s not really about trying to get elected a judge. It’s about trying to get elected a. prince. Like turning into royalty overnight.”
“So will Walker make a difference?” he asked again.
“He will if he wants to. Simple as that. And right now, he’ll make a difference to Carmen Greer. That’s what we need to focus on.”
He nodded. She slowed the car, hunting a turn. They were back up in ranch country. Somewhere near the Brewer place, he guessed, although he didn’t recognize any specific features of the landscape. It was laid out in front of him, so dry and so hot it seemed the parched vegetation could burst into flames at any moment.
“Does it bother you she told all those lies?” Alice asked.
He shrugged. “Yes and no. Nobody likes to be lied to, I guess. But look at it from her point of view. She reached the conclusion he had to be gotten rid of, so she set about achieving it.”
“So there was extensive premeditation?”
“Should I be telling you this?”
“I’m on her side.”
He nodded. “She had it all planned. She said she looked at a hundred guys and sounded out a dozen before she picked on me.”
Alice nodded back. “Actually that makes me feel better somehow, you know? Kind of proves how bad it was. Surely nobody would do that without some kind of really urgent necessity.”
“Me too,” he said. “I feel the same way.”
She slowed again and turned the car onto a farm track. After ten yards the track passed under a poor imitation of the older ranch gates he had seen elsewhere. It was just a rectangle of unpainted two-by-fours nailed together, leaning slightly to the left. The crossbar had a name written on it. It was indecipherable, scorched and faded to nothing by the sun. Beyond it were a few acres of cultivated ground. There were straight rows of turned dirt and an irrigation system pieced together from improvised parts. There were piles of fieldstone here and there. Neat wooden frames to carry wires to support the bushes that no longer grew. Everything was dry and crisp and fallow. The whole picture spoke of agonizing months of back-breaking manual labor in the fearsome heat, followed by tragic disappointment.